Review of Ceiba Restaurant

Ceiba bills itself as a restaurant serving "contemporary Latin cuisine." Since nuevo Latino is at the top of the charts in my favorite food category, I was really looking forward to trying it.

The restaurant is deceptively large with lots of little, moody rooms. The main dining room is a bit too cavernous to be called romantic and a bit too plain to be called funky. The service is mostly friendly, if a tiny bit slow at times.

The bar is an excellent post-work happy hour spot. Each evening there is a different drink special. Piscos for $5 one night, mojitos for $5 another night. There is always a little tasty bite served for free with your drinks. If that doesn't satisfy you, you can always order a snack from the bar menu - like seafood nachos drowned in cheese and topped with one perfect jalapeño slice.

For dinner, we started off with the ceviche sampler platter. It was a bit hit or miss. While the wild bass with chile cream and sweet potatoes was outstanding, the classico was missing some lime. The yellowfin with cucumber, mango, jicama, aji amarillo lime dressing and crushed cashews was also excellent, but the unimpressive shrimp ceviche was just shrimp in cocktail sauce.

Things started really looking up on the next course. Chris had a black bean soup that was perfectly sweet and spiced. The server poured it into his bowl over a perfect ham croqueta. I had the salad with jicama, orange, toasted pumpkin seeds and aged sherry vinaigrette. I don't know why I never think to put seeds in my salads.

It was the main courses that really blew us away. Chris's Yucatan style grilled pork tenderloin on a pupusa was perfectly cooked and spiced. My seared yellowfin tuna was also perfectly cooked and spiced and sitting between sweet purple mashed potatoes and a crisp slaw of shaved asparagus. It's only flaw was that it was too good and I kept eating long after I should have stopped.

We finished off our glutonfest by sharing a surprisingly light key lime corn cake with key lime pie ice cream and guava and strawberry tequila marmalade. Chris also polished off the rest of the rum infused platanos fritos (which we ordered as a side and which I could have eaten a vat of).

Despite a few flaws, Chris says this may be his new favorite DC restaurant. And while this would be a fairly pricey regularly scheduled dinner stop, you will certainly see us there for some happy hours.

Ceiba Restaurant, 701 14th Street NW, Washington, DC