If you haven't been to the area lately, this is not your father's Crystal City!
A slew of restaurants are opening up in this newly redesigned section of Crystal City. About half are open now, one of which is the just-opened Oyamel Cocina Mexicana. Oyamel is the brand new restaurant by Jose Andres of Jaleo, Zaytinya and
Minibar. Like Jaleo and Zaytinya, the portions are appetizer sized and you're encouraged to share among the table. The type of food is modern Mexican, featuring a lot of ingredients you'd find in Mexico but not in Mexican food served in America typically.
The restaurant itself is extremely stylish, really impressive looking and well decorated. While it is a large space, it's broken into sections separated by slightly different styles, levels, and curtains. You could get a sense of the whole space at once without it feeling cavernous. Although it was so stylish, it didn't seem like it tried to hard, it just was very well done.
As we walked by the windows on the way in, we noticed people drinking some very cool cocktails. Turned out to be margaritas with "salt air" on top. The "air" was a feature in the Minibar menu also, it was a great and unusual way to get the salt flavor with the drink (see pic below). The other drink we had was a sweet (and tart) combination of passion fruit, ginger, tequila, and jalapaeno, awesome!
Fried plantain and tortilla chips were brought to the table and served with a green tomatillo guacamole dip. A good start! The huge menu is broken into sections featuring ceviches and seafood, soups, cold dishes, salads, tacos, meat, and some more (the section headers weren't translated so even some of those were guesses). Some of the dishes we shared were: squash blossom quesadilla (not the usual quesadilla, it was more of a deep fried corn tortilla pocket, very tasty); sauteed shrimp with a tomato/olive/onion sauce (surprisingly good); a dragon fruit salad with lime squeezed onto it at the table; a baby corn dish topped with corn nuts that was identical to the Minibar version!; a mushroom and cheese enchilada with a chili salsa; a melted cheese with tequila dish (reminiscent of the top of a french onion soup, yum); flank steak with pineapple; tacos filled with chicken (and supposedly chorizo but that dish was a disappointment). We also saw plenty at our neighbor's table that made us want to come back...and soon! Although at times ordering was sort of a shot in the dark (even some of the English translations still had non-English descriptions), it was evident right away that it would be hard to go too wrong.
The restaurant has only been open for a short while and they are still working out some kinks: they had run out of menus and a few dishes weren't available. However, the service was absolutely impeccable, friendly, and professional. We were wondering if they had brought in some of the staff from Andres's other restaurants as even though it was so new, they were really excellent.
The dessert menu looked pretty interesting, but we opted to try out the new Coldstone Creamery next door. Can't go wrong at Coldstone, especially as it's brand new so no lines!
From the moment we walked in the door until we paid the check, we enjoyed every moment of our Oyamel dining experience. I literally said "I love it here!" about a dozen times. It will be a shame when they start to publicize it because no doubt, the wait for tables will be long. But give us a few of those awesome cocktails and I'm sure we won't mind the wait!
