Almeda restaurant review: The story of the African diaspora in food
Muzzle me if you’ve heard this before, but there’s an intriguing new shoe box in Petworth whose chef is serving the kind of food she likes to eat. It’s called Almeda — like the song praising Black culture by Solange Knowles — and it puts Danielle Harris in the driver’s seat, an open kitchen so close to diners they hear the sizzle of the fryer, the hiss of knives being honed.
Almeda’s address is 828 Upshur St. NW. Maybe you’ve been there before. The last occupant was Little Vietnam, which succeeded Magpie and the Tiger, which followed Pom Pom, Himitsu and Crane & Turtle. All those places had their moments; none made it past adolescence. When I look back, however, it was almost impossible to find a lesser dish on the Japanese-bent menu conceived by chef Kevin Tien and drinks maven Carlie Steiner at Himitsu, one of my top 10 restaurants in 2017.
End of carouselOne big difference from then and now: Almeda, which opened on Halloween and weaves the African diaspora with the chef’s personal history, has fewer seats than anything preceding it, a mere 18. A gleaming espresso machine takes up a patch of space once occupied by the elbows of diners perched on counter stools.
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Another item of interest: fried catfish with spaghetti on the menu. Harris, 31, is a Black woman from Cleveland, where she says the pairing was part of youthful baby showers, cookouts and other gatherings. Why pasta? “Spaghetti fed a lot of people for not a lot of money.” Spoken like a true Midwesterner. The fish, meanwhile, channels the South with its buttermilk brine, zesty hot sauce and light coat of cornmeal.
At 15, Harris got her start in the industry as so many chefs do, as a dishwasher. She cooked in college and became a sous chef at 19. Since she relocated to the District in 2015, she’s been a corporate and private caterer, a manager at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, and a server at Tien’s late Emilie’s. In 2021, she rolled out Little Food Studio, a cafe across the street from Almeda. (The former business, which sold sandwiches, pastries and coffee, now produces wares for the restaurant’s daytime hours.)
A small workspace at Almeda means a menu of just 10 dishes. But every dish has a reason for being there, sometimes a compelling story attached to its inclusion. Consider the jerk pork tenderloin with pureed yams, an elegant dish that could easily be served on white linen. Harris first made the dish for a fundraiser at Fort Monroe, Va., an entrance port for enslaved people in the early 1600s and among the places they were freed after the Civil War, she says. Framed with lightly charred, slightly melting pearl onions, it’s a star in this little galaxy.
The “medium” plates deliver maximum flavor. One, a riff on doubles, is a shout out to street food and Trinidad: chickpeas jazzed up with cumin, ginger and fenugreek and piled atop a crisp-chewy saucer of fried plantains. “I like texture,” says the chef, whose tostones stand in for the traditional soft roti. Harris’s fact-checker is her 30-year-old pastry chef, Chinnel Watson, a native of Trinidad whose father was also a pastry chef. Tostone doubles “are my favorite thing” on the menu, Watson says of the snack staged with house-cooked pepper sauce. The other medium plate gathers beef ribs massaged with awaze, the Ethiopian sauce that gets its gusto from berbere. We’re talking fire and nice. Ruffles of lettuce act as wraps; a sprightly tomato salad helps fill them.
This is the uncommon restaurant where bigger is better — main courses outshine appetizers. Along with that jerk pork, there’s a whole chicken that leaves few techniques untried. The chicken gets brined, lightly smoked, roasted, fried, “everything but cooked in the ground,” said the chef when she came out of the kitchen to introduce it to my party one visit. The largesse, welcoming as a dinner bell, includes potatoes teased with aji amarillo and a bundle of crisp green beans.
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The restaurant marks dishes that are meatless, gluten-free or include nuts. So helpful. A nod to West Africa, Harris’s vegetarian jollof risotto is a goody bag of soft charred cabbage, peanuts, red peppers, tomatoes and what tastes like a knob of ginger that a lot of diners can get around. One scoop begets another and another.
There are a couple items I could pass on. One is the pumpkin-mascarpone spread, part of the restaurant’s (toasted) bread service. Too much maple syrup in the dip makes me think I’m eating dessert. Another lesser moment is a pretty but tame poached “shrimp boil aguachile” served with thick, housemade masa chips that ought to go solo. Then again, I just ate at Mexican standard-bearers Cielo Rojo in Takoma Park and Amparo Fondita in Dupont Circle, and the bar is high for aguachile. At any rate, Almeda tells a more convincing story than its closest competition, the dashing but less consistent Bronze on H Street NE.
Harris went to school to study design but didn’t finish. She retains a good eye. Shiny new tabletops, sheer orange curtains and blue upholstery brighten the once-dark interior, and palm leaves, bigger than life-size, wave from the left wall. Regulars of the previous occupants will cheer the white restroom. (It used to be black. “You couldn’t see,” jokes the chef.)
The people who take your orders and drop off your food are a nice bunch, even if they sometimes fret aloud when not everyone in a party walks through the door at the same time. “Do you know when they’ll be here?” asked a worried server when I showed up alone a few minutes ahead of my first reservation. I get it. Punctuality and turnover are crucial to a small business in particular.
The best prelude to the bill, which includes a 20 percent service fee, all of which goes to hourly workers, is Watson’s slender, rum-fueled and (yes!) gluten-free brownie. Decadent but not cloying, the fudgy bar arrives with butterscotch and a savory yucca-ginger crumble on top and pink-purple tufts of whipped hibiscus tea on the side. More of the pastry chef’s handiwork is available during the day, when Almeda reprises Little Food Studio by offering cookies, scones, coffee and other items until early afternoon.
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Back when she was washing dishes, the young Harris promised herself she’d be a chef by 30, says the owner.
Nice dream. Better reality.
Almeda
828 Upshur St. NW. No phone at present. almedarestaurant.com. Open for inside dining 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Prices: appetizers $12 to $24, main courses $25 to $56 (shareable chicken dinner). Sound check: 74 decibels/Must speak with raised voice. Accessibility: The narrow entry, snug dining room and tiny restroom are not easily navigated by wheelchair users.
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