About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Two Nine. 1218 31st St., NW
Chefs Amy Phan and Zach Ramos first started selling their jewel box-like chirashi bowls as a carryout luxury during the thick of Covid lockdowns. Now after a series of pop ups around town—in addition to private in-home omakase tastings—the Sushi Taro alums have finally landed in a permanent location in Georgetown. Tucked in an alleyway, Two Nine (formerly Ama Ami) features an intimate omakase counter upstairs and a takeout-only daytime cafe downstairs.
The Daytime Cafe
The stars of the daytime cafe are the stunning chirashi bowls, which use premium seafood sourced mainly from Japan’s Toyosu fish market. One of Two Nine’s signatures is the “Tokujo” bowl ($60), featuring a dozen types of seafood, including uni, ikura, and fatty tuna. Other bowls focus on tuna or salmon, plus an even more luxe option with seasonal specialties (like firefly squid, currently).
What’s unique about Two Nine is that they also change up their rice recipe four times a year to complement the fish of the season. So, for example, fattier, sweeter winter fish is paired with a more acidic rice seasoning. Leaner fish in springtime comes with more lightly dressed rice so it’s not overpowered by the vinegar. The chefs also use Okinawan black sugar in the seasoning to give the rice its darker color.
Beyond chirashi, you’ll also find “ono nigiri” inspired by the oversized sushi piled high with garnishes that are often found at conveyor belt sushi restaurants in Hawaii, where Ramos grew up. Bluefin tuna nigiri is dressed like poke with ginger, scallions, and Hawaiian sea salt. Meanwhile, seared amberjack nigiri channels the flavors of grilled amberjack collar marinated in a miso-honey sauce, another popular Hawaiian classic.
Japanese-inspired pastries and specialty coffee and tea drinks are also available throughout the day. Particularly popular is is the ice-shaken matcha, which doesn’t have any dairy but still has a creamy, velvety texture thanks to the right combination of Uji matcha, filtered water, and simple syrup, and to the way it’s shaken. The cafe only serves 10 per day. Meanwhile, Phan is the pastry talent behind adorable turtle-shaped cream puffs, which come in strawberry and other rotating seasonal flavors.
The cafe doesn’t have any seating for now, but some outdoor counter seats and a handful of alleyway patio tables are on their way.
The Omakase Counter
Upstairs is the omakase counter, where Ramos prepares 17 to 21 courses at $205 per person. Two Nine devotes eights seats to the tasting, but an additional four are available for diners to order sushi a la carte from around 30 different selections. (Reservations for the latter are available, but they’ll take walk-ins if they’re not booked.)
“The menu changes every single day,” Ramos says. “The tunas will stay on and king salmon stays on, but I don’t think there’s any other restaurant that has a revolving nigiri sushi menu that changes on a daily basis.”
Ramos says they are working with four different seafood buyers to gain access to a large variety of premium seafood. The chef will often stay up until 2 AM so that he’s the first to claim a particular type of specialty fish from his Japan-based purveyor.
The omakase includes a combination of composed dishes and nigiri. “I would not say it’s a nigiri-focused tasting menu. We’re having a nice balance between multiple appetizers to start, sashimi, some soup, pickles, hot tea, and pastries to follow,” Ramos says.
Ramos brings some of his Hawaiian roots to a classic goma tofu by making it with coconut and spinach instead of soybeans. Other starters recently included marinated giant octopus leg from Hokkaido with wasabi stems as well as bioluminescent squid with a soy-vinegar jelly.
The tasting also highlights different types of sea urchin. (Ramos says there are more than 60 purveyors of the specialty at the Toyosu fish market.) Expect three to four uni options at any given time, including some in filtered ocean water to prevent oxidation.
A small but mighty sake list was curated by Louie Anne Batac-Nguyen, a certified sake sommelier with Capital Sake. Sake pairings are also available for $120 or $75. One Sunday each month, Two Nine hopes to use the restaurant for collaborations and pop-ups, such as an all-day sake bar with snacks.
The name Two Nine is a play on the word “tunay” meaning “to be genuine or true to oneself” in Ramos’s grandfather’s native tongue, a northern Filipino dialect. The number has also become a lucky one in his family, and other family members similarly have establishments with 29. The upstairs dining room has 29 window installations, and omakase reservations go live on the—you guessed it—29th of each month.
The space itself aims to channel the warm, intimate feel of the “homakase” dinners that Ramos and Phan used to host in people’s homes. Ramos displays his Hawaiian skateboard and a ukelele behind the custom-made Japanese maple counter.
“It’s an homage, basically a thank you for everyone letting us into their homes,” Ramos says. “Now it’s our turn to invite you in ours.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
