Bibiana Osteria Enoteca
Bibiana Osteria Enoteca is a new Italian restaurant in downtown D.C., owned by Ashok Bajaj of Rasika, Bombay Club, Ardeo and others. I’m always on the lookout for fabulous Italian food, so I was pretty excited to give this place a try. Happily, my friends were equally enthused, and so we breezed in for dinner on the Friday before last, eager and hungry.
I linked the website above, but don’t even bother clicking – they’re so new that there’s nothing on the site as yet. Of course, this meant going in blind, with only a few hints from early bloggers to guide us on what to expect from the menu. But maybe a little spontaneity is a good thing. (^__^)
The restaurant itself is divided up into essentially three sections. There’s a bar/lounge area that greets you immediately from the door. Then there are two dining areas, one on each side of the bar. The dining rooms are pretty isolated from one another, so I didn’t even know there was another area until the end of the night, as I was leaving. This actually makes the restaurant feel very smallish and cozy, which I liked.
Enough with the decor. On to the food!
There were four of us, and we all got two appetizers, one main course (or pasta) and a dessert, so it kept me quite busy snapping away at the food. Pictured above is an appetizer from the “piatti piccoli” course, the “fichi”: black figs, ricotta salata and almond silvers. Actually, this dish unites the two ingredients that kept popping up in many of the dishes: figs and almonds. I don’t even like figs that much, but these were delicious! (*___*) I would even order them for myself.
The food festa continues below!:
