Food

Outtakes: Reviewing Ba Bay

We don't have space for all of our beautiful photos in the magazine. Here's a chance to flip through some more shots of Ba Bay, reviewed in the March 2011 issue.

A dish of pork belly and clams; owners and cousins Khoa and Denise Nguyen. Photographs by Chris Leaman (left) and Scott Suchman (right).

>>For a slideshow of more pictures of Ba Bay, click here.  

In the March issue, I reviewed Ba Bay, a new spot on Capitol Hill that puts a mod spin on Vietnamese cooking with prettied up autumn rolls, killer wings, and spicy bowls of pho. And I so wanted to love it (great Vietnamese plus the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the soundtrack is basically my dream restaurant). But the product of first-time restaurateurs (and cousins) Khoa and Denise Nguyen is a mixed bag. One minute you can revel in a beautiful chicken-liver mousse, the next a sloppy, gloppy bánh mì. But one aspect of the place has always been reliable: The cocktails, which include a twist on a Moscow mule with freshly made ginger ale and a Cava cocktail named for Lloyd on Entourage.

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Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.