Editor’s note:
This review appears in the March 17, 2013, print edition of WP Magazine, which went to press before Suna announced its closing.
Tom Sietsema: Closed Suna tried too many misguided experiments
Stacy Zarin Goldberg/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST - A twist on Japanese custard was pleasing but did not offer lingering satisfaction.
On the surface, Suna, co-owned by chefs Ari Gejdenson and Johnny Spero, pushes all the right food nerd buttons.
Consider the trend-punching résumé. Spero, Suna’s 27-year-old executive chef, has sauteed and steamed in some of Washington’s most popular kitchens, Komi and Toki Underground. Until Town House closed last year, he cooked at the acclaimed eatery in tiny Chilhowie, Va.
Further, Suna, a neighbor to Gejdenson’s Acqua al 2, aims to offer some of the flavor of fine dining at prices it considers more approachable: $48 for a four-course tasting and $78 for eight dishes. Like many modern American purveyors, the Capitol Hill newcomer cooks to the tune of the season and makes a deal of buying local ingredients.
Suna is reached via a narrow hall and a flight of stairs. What used to be Gejdenson’s apartment and office has been converted into a rustic dining room with fewer than 40 seats. Old wood walls, Danish-made chairs and custom-built walnut tables paint a minimalist picture. A trio of skylights and a view of Eastern Market across the street bring the outside indoors.
Flowers have no home here. Instead, stone and moss serve as table centerpieces. Suna is Latvian for moss, says Spero, who pays tribute to his grandmother with the green detail. The subdued natural design puts one in mind of Amsterdam or Copenhagen, where the chef briefly apprenticed at what has been hailed as the best restaurant in the world: Noma, the boundary-pushing celebration of Nordic cooking.
Armed with that information, your initial taste shouldn’t come as a wonder: A glassy, seed-freckled cracker with a dot of “smoked egg emulsion” and “pastrami spices,” a server announces. The hors d’oeuvre comes with a crackle, followed by notes of smoke and caraway. “Meatless pastrami,” the chef calls his opening act. The tidbit is fun, if a tad precious.
The short menu offers two choices per course. Diners who opt for the longer list eat the whim of the chef. As spare as the setting, the menu boils down descriptions of dishes to three ingredients. A first course called Allium Consomme discloses “yolk,” “chervil” and “salsify.” Root Vegetable, another tersely named appetizer, begins with “raw pickled candied” followed by “arugula” and “brown butter.” Roll those descriptors around in your mind; even for someone who lives to eat, it’s hard to get a sense of how they might play together. And pleasant as the servers are at Suna, their rapid-fire narratives do little to illuminate your understanding.
Both dishes, it turns out, are jokes without punch lines. The soup, in which a broth of charred ginger and leeks is poured over a soft-cooked egg and fried salsify, is dreadful the first time. Blame fell on a tepid consomme. But even a second round, with warm stock, didn’t make me a fan of what goes down like canned fried onions in water. As for the salad, some of the vegetables were so cold, it was as if we were eating them straight from the tundra. Frigid temperatures and bursts of cloying sweetness from candied celery root sent the dish back to the kitchen largely untouched. Curiously, no one asked why.
- Spam
- Obscene
- Duplicate
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