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washingtonpost.com: Raku

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|1900 Q St. NW
(202) 265-7258

Hours of Operation and Prices
Open: M-T 11:30 am-midnight, F-Sat 11:30-2 am, Sun 11:30-10
Entrees: $4-$8.50

Other Information
• Credit Cards: MasterCard, Visa
• Reservations: No
• Dress: Casual
• Parking: Street
• Nearest Metro: Dupont Circle
• Handicapped accessible

Raku's New Wave Asian diner is designed to be replicated, from downtown to Bethesda, then around the country. It signals a shift from the pasta to the noodle era, from casual abundance to studied austerity, from the group to the individual. Most of the seating at Raku is not at companionable tables but at loners' counters. Single diners perch on backless stools, peering through green lacquered bamboo poles to the street scene, sipping cold sake or designer tea, eating a bowl of noodles or three tiny skewers of yakitori - nothing that invites sharing. Forget the menu; I love the stone floors and the mossy, sponged-looking wall panels, the shoji screens and the Japanese videos.

The cooking is assembly-line fast food. Morsels of chicken are skewered and grilled as yakitori or arranged on a bowl of broth with Japanese udon noodles and a handful of vegetables. Rich, yellow, coconut curry broth is ladled over thin rice noodles with a few shrimp and vegetables (Bangkok noodles) or over thicker, wiry egg noodles with chicken and pretty much the same vegetables (Chiang Mai noodles). Those same egg noodles form the base of Kowloon noodles. Or if the meat is changed to sliced beef and kim chee is stirred in to fire up the chicken broth, it becomes Korean chili beef.

The chicken broth tastes real, and the vegetables are crunchy-fresh. The ingredients cooperate rather than clash. Still, there's no escaping the fact that this is mass cooking. Dim sum taste as if they've been cooked in a crockpot. And the shrimp paste is starchy. What work best are skewers, of Nonya pork, diced shark meat rubbed with Thai green curry paste, the little chicken morsels or flat slabs of squid. And the most popular dish - deservedly so - is Hunan chicken salad. As for dessert, the sorbets are the class acts on the list.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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Update: 2024-07-09

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