The Bombay Club, Washington D.C.

An international town like Washington, D.C., is bound to have great restaurants from all over the world, but not all of them are favorites of Washington powerbrokers.

Founded in 1988, Ashok Bajaj’s Bombay Club has seen the likes of Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela and Alan Greenspan, in addition to being a favorite of the Clintons, who spent their 37^th anniversary there. With all its notable fans, The Bombay Club was an obvious choice for a family dinner in D.C.

The restaurant is incredibly elegant with a white grand piano and turbaned waiters evoking the early days of the British Raj. Looking through the menu, we found the restaurant features traditional Indian dishes, as opposed to the cross-cultural styles of Bajaj’s other restaurant, Rasika. We began with a single seekh kebab, one of my favorite appetizers, of minced lamb cooked in a traditional tandoori clay oven.

Moving to the main course, we skipped the white rice for an order of chicken biryani and naan, which was nice and fluffy and served with ghee. The biryani had just the right amount of spice and is highly recommended over the white rice. If you find it a little too spicy, mixing in a little bit of raita yogurt is common.

The tandoori chicken came out even better than the kebabs, though my favorite dish of the evening was the lamb vindaloo, a curry dish that tasted great but can be found a little too spicy. For vegetarians, I recommend the lasooni palak, which is a spinach curry served with palak, a type of cottage cheese. With all the spice we needed something sweet to help cool off, opting for an order of gulab jamun, balls of dough fried and served in a sweet syrup.

815 Connecticut Ave. NW

Washington, D.C. 20006

tel 202 659 3727