We ate at Hai Hai for the first time in 2019. Despite some service-related hiccups—beginning with an unconscionably long time to be seated—we quite enjoyed the meal and at the end of my write-up of that meal I said there would certainly be a second visit. Well, it’s taken more than five years for that second visit to happen. As you may remember, things went topsy-turvy for a few years in early 2020. And then when we got fully back into the eating out swing of things, Hai Hai somehow fell off our radar. It took a James Beard award nomination and then win this year for Chef Christina Nguyen to put it back on there. I’d grabbed a reservation earlier in the summer and this past weekend we descended on them for dinner with friends we eat out with often. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Pan-Asian Food
Teaism (Washington, D.C.)
Here is my last meal report from our sojourn in DC last month. It wasn’t the last meal we had in DC; we ate at Bantam King that evening, and even I will spare you a report on our lunch at Shake Shack at Union Station the next day before we boarded our train to New York. I know these details matter to you. You’ll also be interested to know that this is probably the first time I’ve completed a meal report from a city within a month of leaving it. Don’t get used to it though.
Teaism is a casual pan-Asian mini-chain with a few locations in DC. The Penn Quarter outpost is—like Hill Country and Rasika—a short walk from the museum row and it was there we repaired for lunch on our last full day of museum-going. It had been recommended—as all our other choices had been—by the good people of Donrockwell.com. We were looking for a quick, casual place with enough on the menu to appeal to adults and children alike and so it proved to be. Continue reading