Barbecue salmon at Masa 14.

Favorite Dining Near Theaters, Clubs, Galleries

Washington is a city full of theaters, museums and galleries, but true food devotees are more interested in shows put on by chefs and exhibits displayed on plates.

Luckily for them, wherever there’s a cultural Mecca, a hot restaurant is not far away. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a tour from the Studio Theatre in Northwest to the Smithsonian in Southwest and check out what the food artists are up to. Chances are they’re working their palates to blend just the right shade of Mmm.

For pure entertainment value, a duet of restaurateurs, Kaz Okochi (chef/owner of Kaz Sushi Bistro) and Richard Sandoval (chef/magnate and owner of Zengo), teamed up to produce a rousing show at 14th and Swann streets near U. Their joint venture, Masa 14 (1825 14th St., NW; 202/328-1414; $60 per person, all inclusive), has been a hit since it opened last fall.

The 5,000-square-foot space is steps away from The Black Cat nightclub and The Source Theatre, a few blocks from the Studio Theatre, up the street from HR-57 jazz club and right in the middle of a whirlwind of neighborhood diversions.

The look comes together with the sleek, clean-lined zeitgeist: exposed ductwork and brick, a poured-concrete bar (65 feet long) and floor, walls and tables of striped hickory, dangling red pendant lamps and a dramatic staircase in the middle of the room (reminiscent of the one at The Source) that will one day lead to a rooftop deck. The bar menu, impressively, includes more than 100 tequilas alongside the requisite “signature” cocktails, such as a caipirinha refreshed, perhaps unnecessarily, with pineapple juice.

Chef Antonio Burrell runs Masa 14’s kitchen and interprets the restaurant’s Latin-Asian fusion menu that follows the small-plate theme. Fusion translates to a temaki hand roll of barbecued eel coupled with pickled jalapeño and a flatbread that comes out of a pizza oven topped with tuna sashimi, arugula, capers and yuzu. The concept allows for a carefree melding that, to my palate, tips to the Asian side of things.

A hoisin sauce sweetness pervades many of the dishes, which is not a bad thing when balanced with acid or heat. I love the sautéed and smoky edamame, crunchy shrimp with wasabi sauce, black cod with chipotle miso, pork belly tacos (hold the pineapple preserve), barbecued salmon with achiote ponzu, and pork tan tan noodles with peanut sauce. (The noodles were more like tagliatelle.) Also, don’t overlook the chunky yucca fries. The food has integrity, isn’t drearily serious and doesn’t add to the deficit; in other words, it’s just fun. Isn’t that a nice change of pace?

Got tickets for a midnight jazz jam session at HR-57 on 14th Street? Head to the Donovan House Hotel at Thomas Circle for a dinner at Zentan (1155 14th St., NW; 202/379-4366; $80 per person, all inclusive) that will get the evening started on the right notes.

You’d never know that the chic boutique hotel was formerly a Holiday Inn, but the new décor clearly reflects the Asian bent of Canadian chef Susur Lee’s (Shang, New York; Lee, Toronto) fusion menu. Floor-to-ceiling beige drapes; chopstick set, ebony-stained tables; slatelike floors; a sushi bar tucked into a corner—you get the picture, and it’s cunningly lit by a profusion of chunky faux candles (the “wicks” quiver ever so slightly) suspended overhead.

Lee cooks with confidence and style, easily mingling pan-Asian and French influences. Start with the zingy Thai chili-laced martini, then make a beeline for the Singapore slaw, a tower of crunch-rich goodies, including taro root, carrots and jicama, tossed in plum dressing.

You begin just wanting to take a bite or two, but then find you can’t stop. Force yourself; you need to make room for lobster and shrimp dumplings crusted with almonds, crudo of salmon with shiso, and satays brought to life by a trio of toothsome sauces. Caramelized black cod with miso mustard is satiny, stopping deliciously short of over-sweetness. Crispy garlic chicken, prepared in a three-day process similar to Peking duck, yields succulent dividends.

The sushi here stands up to D.C.’s best contenders; indeed, a recent special of tuna tataki, crusted with black pepper and touched with sesame oil, soared.

I’m not usually a fan of fusion, but Lee makes it work at Zentan by not going overboard. And he’s smart enough to stack the dessert deck with something you see little of on Asian menus: chocolate. I never imagined I’d write this sentence ever again in my lifetime: Don’t miss the molten chocolate cake.

Restaurateur Ashok Bajaj owns seven restaurants from Penn Quarter to Cleveland Park; yet, whichever one you visit, the chances are good he’ll be there, too. That’s why GQ last year named this artful dodger one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington. He’s done classic and modern Indian (The Bombay Club and Rasika, respectively), a wine bar (Bardeo) and updated American (701, Ardeo) and even dabbled in experimental American (The Oval Room).

His latest to open: Italian cooking with Bibiana Osteria (1100 New York Ave., NW; entrance at 12th and H streets; 202/216-9550; $80 per person, all inclusive), just a stone’s throw from the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

For Bajaj’s latest endeavor, the impresario has called upon chef Nicholas Stefanelli, whose pedigree includes stints at four-star Maestro and New York’s Fiamma, to take the helm of a 120-seat downtown eatery. To call the place an osteria is too much humility on Bajaj’s part; the setting is way more refined than the moniker connotes. Dark wood finishes; rich, earth-toned leathers; beaded steel curtains and spherical chandeliers sculpted from crumpled strips of aluminum speak more of high fashion than middlebrow.

And the food follows suit. It seems the more Stefanelli tries to simplify, the more the refinement of his cooking emerges. There’s a pizza oven at Bibiana, but the dinner pizza features a quivering poached egg and ribbons of zigzagging lardo (Italian cured pork fat); they promise to add white truffles in season.

Ubiquitous beet salad here is made with golden, red and chiogga beets, creamy Moncenisio blue cheese and almonds. Roasted sweetbreads with fennel cream are standouts, as are the veal polpettini.

For entrees, pastas (smoked potato gnocchi, green apple and Taleggio risotto), fish and seafood dishes excel. The black capellini with blue crab is one D.C.'s most intriguing dishes. Skate with brown butter is turned out admirably with clams and Jerusalem artichokes. Milanese-style braised veal cheek with white polenta, mushrooms and hazelnuts is sumptuously pleasing.

The vanilla panna cotta is a lovely way to end a meal here, but I’d be infinitely more satisfied with the appetizer dates stuffed with ricotta salata and a glass of Felsina vin santo Toscana.

The only thing that would make the exhibit of Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History more perfect is if the oven held the Parker House rolls served at CityZen and a fryer turned out the hushpuppies with honey butter at Chef Eric Ziebold’s Sou’Wester (both restaurants are in The Mandarin Oriental Hotel; 1330 Maryland Ave., SW; 202/787-6006; CityZen: $130 per person, all inclusive; Sou’Wester: $70 per person, all inclusive).

CityZen is where chef Ziebold’s studied whimsy takes center stage (well, off center) in a spotless kitchen that opens into a dining room so Zen with low-lit mood that it makes a couple feel alone even when the space is full. Sou’Wester, Ziebold’s homage to Southern cooking (the name refers to the restaurant’s Southwest D.C. location), is bright, light-drenched, modern and sleek, with long beige banquettes with red bolsters, picture windows affording stunning views of the Potomac and cherry wood tables where placemats sub for tablecloths.

Just for kicks, let me relate to you a past meal I enjoyed at CityZen. (The menu changes frequently, so many of these dishes may not be available when you visit. Cruel, huh?)

First, a signature mushroom fritter followed by a quivering egg-cup custard of extra virgin olive oil and cayenne. A corn soup tasted like 20 ears’ worth of flavor had been concentrated into one small bowl and blended with the freshest milk and cream. Quail egg yolk spilled over a scaloppini of sweetbreads delicately sautéed to crispy goodness, melding with an emulsion of pecorino cheese. Parker House rolls arrived before the entree, and they were feathery soft, shining with butter and sprinkled with fleur de sel. They are served fittingly in a lidded wood box, like gifts from the Magi, only better. Even though my grilled dorade was cooked to barely opaque perfection, I would happily have traded it in for another box of those rolls.

Or, I’d have run next door for hushpuppies, if Sou’Wester had been open then. The chef presides over a menu that toys with familiar Southern favorites. Pan-fried oysters are served on half-shells with smoked pepper aioli. Omnipresent pork belly comes with pickled watermelon rind; porgie, a beloved fish of country fishermen, gets dressed up on a bed of crab imperial awash in beurre blanc. Rockfish comes with collard greens, blackened bluefish with Cajun rice, and rabbit leg and sausage with creamy grits.

Some of my favorite dishes are those with roots less obvious, at least to me: A poached egg resting on a mound of buttery grits and surrounded by perfectly sautéed sweetbreads is rapturous, and the Monte Cristo, a take on the batter-dipped ham-and-cheese sandwiches found in diners, oozes with cheesy goodness.

The fried chicken—crunchy yet juicy and a bargain at $13—takes immediate prominence among the top contenders in town. But corned beef short ribs with horseradish sauce seem out of place on this menu. Maybe it’s a nod to the O’Hara part of the South. The side dishes are not to be missed: Crispy fried okra is wholesomely divine, and Ziebold’s broccoli rice casserole has never seen a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Start a meal at Sou’Wester with a mint julep or a Bloody Mary and end up with pastry chef Amanda Cook’s dense banana cream pie or elegant fried apple pie a la mode.

Or take a seat in the restaurant’s promenade after dinner, sit in a rocking chair and sip on a Jack Daniels-laced root beer float, guaranteed to coax good memories, which for me would include past meals at CityZen.