Dinner at Ba Bar

I heard Ba Bar had the best chicken wings around, so of course, I had to go test the theory. Ba Bar, a popular Vietnamese restaurant on Capital Hill, and with two other spots, is known for its Oxtail Pho. Ask most people where their fav Pho place is and they'll tell you its Ba Bar. Here, its all about the quality of the meat and the execution of the dishes. They have a full bar with handcrafted cocktails and they're also open late.

I couldn't resist trying one of their cocktails. One of my go to drinks is a Sidecar. There are a number of ways to make them and they seem to taste different everywhere. At Ba Bar they used lemon, resulting in a nice and tart cocktail, which is just what I was wanting. And you've got to love a good sugared rim.

The two of us shared three dishes. We tried the Chicken Wings, the Dumplings, and the Chicken Salad. I was satisfied with the wings. There were a lot on the plate and way worth the $10 price tag. The wings were hot in temperature and were glazed in a caramel sauce, rice vinegar, nuoc cham, roasted garlic, and bird's eye chili. They were good wings and pretty similar to other Vietnamese spots.

The Chicken Salad was a nice surprise. The salad wads packed full of goodness. There was cabbage, chicken, rau thom, banana blossom, peanut, crispy shallot, rau ram, and a nuac cham vinaigrette. The flavors were bright, fresh, wholesome, and best of all the chicken was cooked perfectly. It was tender and seasoned correctly and was a nice balance to the rest of the salad.

The only miss were the Dumplings. The housemade rice dumplings were a little chewy for us. But the vegetarian filling was interesting with mung bean, carrot, jicama, fried shallot, mushroom, and a spicy soy vinaigrette. It was fun to try some new flavors, nonetheless. If you're still hungry and wanting something sweet, they sell French pastries and macarons in a display case in the lobby. They are open for brunch on the weekends, so I imagine they sell a lot of pastries at that time.