Sticky Rice (Atlas Neighborhood)

My neighbors Gretchen and Josh are frequenters of Sticky Rice, a trendy Japanese joint in the frontier land known as H Street, or the Atlas neighborhood. It’s so new, they’ve not branded their hood yet, but I’m a fan of Atlas given the historic theater there decimated during the MLK riots.

This was not the neighborhood to go to on the July 4th weekend when the locals had leftover firecrackers. A few times, I wasn’t sure if the pops echoing around me were legal or not, but the lady on her hard-wired phone sitting on a barcalounger in the front yard didn’t seem to mind.

Entering the packed place, we checked in with the hostess slash bus-girl. We were not sure if she had the wiping-tables responsibility as a method to know a table was available, or if the place was simply too short staffed. It didn’t pass us by that during the nearly 25-cum-45 minute wait, while shiny objects distracted the not-so-with-it, but very polite hostess – that the table we eventually sat at was empty from the very start. But where else did we have to go?

Besides, during our wait, we eyeballed what logically should have been calamari, but were a bucket o’ tots that also came in a vegan option. Of course the chicken came in a vegan option too… The college kids eating the bucket offered us a taste, but we declined. For a place whose top seller is tater tots, they need to hire a guy in the back whose sole job it is to fill ketchup bottles. After being seated, our waitress brought us a nearly empty one, good only for one glob’s worth.

During our wait, I did note that the toked-up hostess could speak American Sign Language. I was impressed particularly being so close to Gallaudet. Having had a deaf assistant before, I appreciated her skills in reaching out to a core segment of her customer base.

Speaking of core customers… we tried to figure out who should visit Sticky Rice and we decided it was a place for people who wanted trendy and hip on a budget. We didn’t yet see it as a destination restaurant because the neighborhood was simply too raw, but worth a try for those adventurous enough who don’t rely on the metro to get around. This of course is no reflection of my neighbors, however -- so perhaps my observation is over generalized. Plus, Gretchen and Josh go there to sit at the bar and eat sushi and have fun, whereas my party was there for a sit down dinner and my observations of the place were clouded by that angle. I'd go back for the sushi and perhaps it can oust Bonsai Sushi on 23rd Street as my hole-in-the-wall of choice for that kind of dinner.

Looking at the menu, there were a decent number of sake and Junmai choices. When I asked Gretchen why she likes the place, she raised a glass to the Sake Bomb, which comes with a gong. Not ordering Sushi here was a mistake. Instead, I and the two other guys in my party, David and Lou, all tried their noodle dishes. True to Japanese form, these dishes were bland bland bland.

I had the sesame chicken with udon noodles. Simple… this dish was no more than a bowl of noodles, some chopped up chicken and julienned veggies in some kind of bland soy sauce. But filling and decent. David had the coconut shrimp, which looked exactly the same as mine, but with shrimp. He said there may have been some coconut waved over the top at some point, but none had ever touched the shrimp.

For a starter, we chose, of course, the tots, and the lettuce wraps, which were not appropriately scaled. You can’t have 2” leaves of droopy iceberg lettuce and 1” chunks of chicken to stuff them with. It simply doesn’t work mathematically.

While my expectations for the place dropped into the basement when I saw they offered $1 PBRs for life if you got a sticky rice tattoo, that didn’t justify the slow service. This is not the restaurant in which to linger. It’s a get in, get out or get drunk kind of place. Rachel, our server, even commented, “I need to pay more attention to you guys.” And then promptly forgot about us again.

Speaking of our forced lingering, the hip don’t welcome the wise. ‘Wise’ being code word older person bothered by noise levels of concert proportions. Despite that criticism, I found the place rather fun – right down to the sharpie pen art on the wall that if you stand back far enough, it looks like actual art instead of a sketches on plywood.

While all of this review sounds ultimately negative, I will return to Sticky Rice for a night of Sake Bombs and Sushi… but I have to be in the right mindset to do so. And with somebody who can talk really, really loud.