Chicken fingers on a Monday? When I saw the tray full of fingers that looked suspiciously like the chicken I ate last week, I panicked, thinking I missed the whole week and it was Chicken Finger Thursday already. I had missed my deadline for The Voice and even though it was assigned not twenty minutes earlier, I thought I had failed to do a German paper due Thursday. At that moment I realized that Leo’s controls my life and my emotions in a way that it never should, and that a trip off campus would be quite beneficial.
With mounting piles of work and that pesky German paper whose deadline I almost wish I’d missed so I wouldn’t have to do it, I needed a place that was tasty yet timely: I found Raku, on the corner of P St. and 19th St. at Dupont Circle.
A Pan-Asian restaurant created by Mark Miller, owner of the upscale downtown restaurant Red Sage, Raku is a casual, relaxing place with great-tasting food for students on the go or tight on cash. They’re only 99 percent student-friendly since they don’t serve coffee, but the tasty entrées and the hot or cold tapas selections were nicely sized and moderately priced.
The idea behind Raku is to bring Asian street food to a restaurant setting in order to provide a quick and decent meal. The wait time between ordering and receiving your food is surprisingly short, making Raku a great choice for a pre-movie dinner, midday shopping rest or easy study break.
Before opening Raku, Miller spent time in Southeast Asia collecting recipe ideas from local restaurants and sidewalk food vendors. The result is a menu that includes fancier dishes such as the Guava Barbeque Ribs as well as no-nonsense, more traditional plates like the Peanut Chicken Skewers.
Their chicken dumplings are a little bland but well-steamed with a great texture. The Kway Teow was definitely the biggest winner, though, combining tasty chicken, pepper and eggs with contrasting textures of both soft and crunchy noodles.
With large, inverted paper umbrellas on the ceiling and swanky, relaxing music playing, Raku is an ideal place to wind down in the evening, especially if you’re looking for an alternative that doesn’t hit your wallet as hard as those greasy Leo’s mozzarella sticks hit your stomach.
