New on Resy DC: Bar Civita, Graffiato, Toro Toro & More
A few weeks ago we launched in the DC metro area with a list of superb restaurant partners including Doi Moi, Estadio, Mintwood Place and Peter Chang. Today, we’re thrilled welcome five new players to the Resy dance floor: Top of Eater’s Heat Map, Bar Civita; the “crazy good Italian,” Graffiato; the lavish Toro Toro, the new Filipino star, Purple Patch, and Corduroy’s baby sister, Baby Wale.
Here are the specifics for all five venues, where tables are available immediately. Grab a seat.
BAR CIVITA
Ideally every neighborhood would have a cozy spot for sipping limoncello outside in summer, and cozying up by the fire with a bowl of pasta come winter. Now that’s a reality in Woodley Park with the opening of Bar Civita. The 80-seat restaurant from former Liberty Tavern head chef Liam LaCivita takes over the space formerly occupied by Murphy’s Irish bar. While the team freshened up the 76 year-old building with new paint and larger windows, key attributes remain intact—including a wood-burning hearth, spacious bar area, and 40-seat patio. —Washingtonian Book Now at Bar Civita.
GRAFFIATO
This is the crazy good Italian restaurant from Mike Isabella, the guy who literally wrote the book on crazy good Italian food. (Seriously, the book is called “Crazy Good Italian.”) He’s also a veteran of Top Chef and Top Chef All-Stars. At Graffiato chef serves seasonal, artisanal pizzas and small plates inspired by the food he grew up eating in New Jersey prepared by his Italian-American grandmother. With heavy influence from Mediterranean and Latin culinary traditions, Graffiato is anything but a traditional Italian eatery. Book Now at Graffiato.
TORO TORO
Richard Sandoval’s Toro Toro –Japanese for tuna and Spanish for bull– is a lush South American steakhouse with a Japanese twist. Servers wielding swords will carve meat table-side, but you’d be wrong to think this was your typical churrascaria. Over 30 small and shared plates, like spicy tuna tartare, mushroom and arugula flatbread with goat cheese, seafood arepas and chaufa, a Peruvian version of Chinese fried rice, complete, nay, make the menu. Check out the late-night lounge for a post-meat reposado or añejo to complete the experience. Book Now at Toro Toro.
PURPLE PATCH
Filipinos represent the largest Asian populations in Maryland’s Prince Georges and Charles counties that neighbor D.C., and at least five restaurants homing in on Pinoy cooking have recently opened or are in the works. Among them is Purple Patch, in the eclectic Mount Pleasant neighborhood, which just launched in March [2015]. The restaurant slid in a burger and Caesar salad to their repertoire, but Filipino classics dominate the menu. They serve as the gentlest possible introduction to the Philippine’s slow-simmering amalgam of Chinese, colonial Spanish, and indigenous flavors. (The country spans 6,000 islands; pinning down one sweeping definition of its food is untenable.) Start with gratifying lumpia, the cigarillo-thin spring rolls stuffed with pork and beef and served with banana ketchup, a catchall Filipino condiment. Co-owner Patrice Cleary’s Filipino mother makes them for the restaurant. Cane vinegar gave the chicken adobo, arguably the cuisine’s most famous dish, a sweet-and-sour ping that American palates will appreciate. Another easygoing introduction: sinigang, a tender hunk of pork belly over rice in a lemony broth. –Eater Book Now at Purple Patch.
BABY WALE
The casual and critically acclaimed sibling of Mt. Vernon’s Corduroy, Baby Wale from its name on down is one of a kind and we love it. The playful menu and atmosphere, with a Go Go soundtrack to boot, is refreshing. The food is casually serious (seriously casual?) with the fine dining touches that signals you’re in the hands of a pro kitchen. Book Now at Baby Wale.
