Beating the January chills with some Latin inspired restaurants! (part 1)

Snowy January night in DC

Baby it's cold outside!

Date nights have been quite chilly so far in 2014. However, the hubs and I have been able to warm up with some tasty dishes at Latin restaurants Oyamel and Zenga.

A few weeks before Christmas 2013, the hubs told me that we were going to have a date night on January, 2, 2014. And that was it!

I'm not a huge fan of not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Metal butterfly mobiles 

When date night came around, hubs finally told me that we were going to Oyamel as we were turning down 7th Street. Oyamel is one of the handful of restaurants José Andrés' Think Food Group. It's not a new restaurant - it's been around since 2007 in Penn Quarter and was previously located in Arlington, but it's new to me. Plus, I'm a fan of José Andrés and really want to go to every single one of his restaurants (if possible).

Since it was our first time at Oyamel, the server explained that the dishes - the antojitos - are basically Mexican "tapas" and that most people get about 3-4 dishes. So here's some of the stuff that we ate.

Guacamole!

We started off with the guacamole, even though the hubs was never a guac fan. I saw servers preparing it at tables near buy and it just looked tasty. I know hubs was glad we ordered it - I think it even has changed his mind about guacamole since this was probably the freshest he's ever had it. We definitely killed the guacamole, I was starting to get worried that I might not have room for the ceviche and tacos I ordered.

Sometimes I wonder why I don't order ceviche more often. I love dishes that have a slight sour flavor - lemon, limes, vinegar  - and knowing that the fish in ceviche is "cooked" in lime juice, I should make it a point to order these. There were two ceviche specials that we tried - a scallop ceviche with pineapple and a hamachi (yellow tail) in a horchata sauce (not pictured). Both delicious!

Octopus taco

Both tacos I ordered were really really good. Well seasoned. Meat cooked perfectly. They were just lovely! Now, I should note that the tacos aren't huge - the tortilla is about 4" in diameter. But even though they are small they pack in a lot of flavor.

For both of my tacos, I got the two of the specials - octopus and sweetbreads.

Sweetbreads taco

The octopus taco was really well done. The one thing I had not expected was how spicy it was. I was too impressed with the vibrant colors and delicious smells that I failed to recognize a chili staring right at me. It was a quick hit of heat that luckily was quickly calmed by some water. However, the heat did not take away from the flavors. The other one was sweetbreads, which I had never tried before. They were soft in texture and gave a slight minerally flavor that was wonderfully complemented by the citrus salsa.

Pastel de tres leches pina

Even though we had a good bit of food, I'll admit that my sweet tooth often gets the better of me. So, I ordered the pastels de tres leches pina. I really enjoyed the pineapple gel and caramel espuma on top of the cake. It was so tasty - if I had enough room, I would have been tempted to get another.

Overall, I was very happy with the food and drinks at Oyamel. If I worked in near the Penn Quarter, I could see myself coming out there for drinks from time to time. Since I mostly got food from the specials list, I want to go back just so I can get some of the standard fare :-)