Acqua Bistecca, 14 Ridge Sq., NW
To understand the peculiar name Acqua Bistecca—“water steak”—it helps to have some background knowledge about Michael Mina.
The celebrity chef cut his teeth in the ‘90s at Aqua, a San Francisco fine dining restaurant he later rechristened simply “Michael Mina.” There, practically everything came from the sea— steak wasn’t even on the menu. But at two of his more recent concepts—Stripsteak and Bourbon Steak—the focus is right in the name.
Acqua Bistecca, Mina’s latest project and second DC restaurant (he opened Bourbon Steak at the Georgetown Four Seasons in 2009), blends elements from several of these earlier efforts. It opens on Wednesday, September 10 in the City Ridge development near Tenleytown.
The Italian-focused Mediterranean menu, developed by Fiola Mare and Via Sophia alum Colin Clark, is centered around two columns: Acqua (several choices of grilled fish over a bed of saffron-orange fregola) and bistecca (several cuts of steak chargrilled, brushed with Lambrusco butter, and served with a caponata-stuffed cipollini onion).
Mina and Clark are confident that these preparations are versatile enough to suit everything from monkfish to Maine lobster, and from a 12-ounce flatiron to a 40-ounce bistecca alla Fiorentina.
“You create a style for your cooking,” Mina says. “This is product-driven food people crave. It’s not going to be tweezer food, but it’s going to bring out that wow factor and that memorability.”
One starter, “The Only Caviar and Gigante Mozzarella Stick,” for $42, might be especially memorable. It’s exactly what it sounds like: an oversized mozzarella stick (up to two feet long for large parties) topped with caviar.
Other dishes are less showy: saffron arancini, daily crudos with seasonal fruit, lasagna with Swiss chard and sausage ragù, and osso buco braised in Barolo. For dessert, you might order the bomba doughnuts with huckleberry jam.
Mina envisions Acqua Bistecca, where the dining room is centered around a towering 22-foot mirrored bar, as more of a neighborhood restaurant than Bourbon Steak, where a lobster potpie will run you $130 and Wagyu steaks cost up to $640. But he’s also used to catering to regulars with deep pockets.
“Our price point obviously will be different from Bourbon Steak,” Mina says. “Believe it or not, I do have people that use Bourbon Steak a few days a week. But it was very important to cast a wider net of the way you dine here, so you could use it three or four days a week.”
DC has thus far been kind to Mina. He currently runs dozens of restaurants from Saudi Arabia and Dubai to Florida, California, Las Vegas, and Hawaii, but the Bourbon Steak in Georgetown has been one of his most enduring hits. Mina says it’s stayed busy even as other restaurants have taken a hit from Trump’s federal takeover of the city.
“I know what’s going on in the world and I know people say that DC’s a tough market, and I get it,” he says. “But the reality is, our clientele has been extremely loyal to us here. They’ve kept us moving forward constantly even with the ups and downs.”
