K-Last night a friend and I went to Mango Tree at DC’s City Center. According to its website the restaurant was founded in 1994 and the original Mango Tree is located in a beautiful Thai house in Bangkok built during the reign of King Rama VI, almost 100 years ago. The chain has restaurants in cities including London, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, Dubai and Manila.
The Mango Tree restaurant group, has partnered up with acclaimed chef / owner Richard Sandoval of Richard Sandoval restaurants for the DC restaurant and per the website “offers contemporary Thai cuisine with a bold new twist, along with authentic essential classics.”
I chose Mango Tree due to Tom Sietsema’s review in the Washington Post. However, after I made the reservation, I began to read Yelp reviews and became a bit nervous after reading about people not getting their entrees even after a three hour wait, “meh” food, couldn’t find the dining area and other negative comments. I warned my friend that we could be in for an unpleasant surprise. Fortunately all that doom and gloom was for nothing.
I arrived a bit early so I sat down at the bar to have an happy hour drink at the bar. During happy hour drinks and snacks are $6. I asked Tim, the bartender, about the strawberry basil caipirinha and he assured me that it was very good. I looked at him and said, “Ok, but then I’m going to expect it’s going to be amazing.” He said he would make sure of it. I got my drink and took a sip and it was very good. Thanks Tim!
When my friend arrived he also had a caipirinha and as we were having drinks we asked if there was a way to let the dining room know that we were in the bar so we would be a little late – they said no problem and they would take care of it – mind you, this was around 5:15 p.m. After about 15 minutes the hostess came down to the bar and asked if we were ready to go to the dining room – yes, we were – and she asked if we would like someone to carry our drinks up for us – nope, we were fine.
Dining room is beautiful. The windows are huge so you can get a great view of outside, yes its streets and buildings but hey, you are in the city. Daniel, our server, was very knowledgeable about the food and answered all of our questions patiently, including some smart ass ones from my friend.
I ordered the grilled baby octopus salad and the eggplant and mushroom curry and my friend ordered the chili flake calamari and the grilled Portobello mushroom curry. The salad was very good but if you are one that doesn’t care for spicy heat, I wouldn’t recommend it. I like spicy and didn’t mind that it caused my nose to run. The calamari was nice and crisp but the green apple and wasabi sauce was also spicy. Both curries were very good but were not very spicy – maybe they were, but just not as spicy as the appetizers! We did have dessert, the mango cheese cake. The cheesecake was light and tasted more creamy than cheese and the mango slices – one was good and the other must have been cut near the pit as it was a bit tough – made it very decorative. It was a nice dessert. Overall, I would say the meal was good – not amazing but good – and a little pricey. I’m glad I went there once, but with all of the fabulous restaurants around town I’m unsure if I would return.
2GirlsinDC 