Meet Washington's Most successful restaurant

In December 1988, when Ashok Bajaj opened the Bombay Club here, the city was gearing up for the inauguration of President George H.W. Bush. For Washington, that's pretty much where the celebrating ended. That year the District of Columbia had surpassed Detroit as the country's homicide capital, with a record 372 killings. The city was not, to put it mildly, recognized for its hospitality, and it extended little welcome to the newly arrived Bajaj, a 20-something Indian immigrant who smelled an opportunity to nudge the nation's capital into the national conversation about fine dining.
He planned to begin with the Bombay Club, an elegant restaurant specializing in Indian cuisine, a term that at the time was widely considered an oxymoron. Landlord after landlord rejected his proposal, more than one on the grounds that "Indian restaurants smell," Bajaj recalled. "I can't tell you how hard it was to get a space. But I never gave up.
Today Bajaj, although not widely known outside the district, is arguably the most successful restaurateur in Washington. And his trajectory over the past 25 years mirrors that of a city that has gone from a paragon of urban dysfunction to a wellspring of prosperity. He celebrated the opening of Nopa Kitchen and Bar, his eighth restaurant here, in early May. A modern brasserie, it is pitched to a younger audience, complete with decorative taxidermy and house-made charcuterie. Its grand opening drew a gaggle of VIPs, including Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
 From the start, Bajaj showed a knack for luring the elite, with a nuanced rogan josh and white-glove service at the Bombay Club. (The first President Bush was an early customer. It was also where, late last year, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth first suggested to her uncle Donald E. Graham that the family consider selling the newspaper.) But Washington was a different city when Bajaj arrived. "The culinary scene was not here in the '80s," he said in the clipped accent of his native New Delhi.
 Neither was the affluence that has, according to 2011 Census data, made the area home to the highest median household income in the country - a status impossible to imagine in the crime-stricken '80s and scandal-addled '90s, when the municipal budget fell into such disarray that the federal government seized control of the city's finances. Rob Pitingolo, a research associate with the Urban Institute, cautions that the high income figures obscure lingering socioeconomic disparities, particularly in the heart of the city, but they reveal significant growth in what has always been Bajaj's target audience.
 Influential Spanish chef and restaurateur José Andrés, based in the district, and Eric Ziebold, who left Per Se in New York to open CityZen here in 2004, are among many culinary heavyweights who have thrived in the resurgent city. Tom Sietsema, The Washington Post's restaurant critic, said: "People look at Washington as an important place to eat in a way that they didn't even four or five years ago. Ashok has certainly contributed to that." Most of the restaurants in Bajaj's Knightsbridge Restaurant Group are tightly concentrated around the Penn Quarter area, which didn't have much to recommend it when he first set up shop there, save for its proximity to halls of power. Beyond the Bombay Club, located within shouting distance of the White House, is an array of lavishly appointed, critically lauded properties that speak to his range as both operator and epicure. They include Bibiana Osteria-Enoteca, where Justice Antonin Scalia is known to sip martinis while lunching on regional Italian cuisine, and the Oval Room and 701 Restaurant, power-dining canteens where Tony Conte, a chef whom Bajaj recruited from Jean-Georges in New York, churns out subtly edgy new American cuisine. "The goal was to be close to the Old Executive Office Building, the IMF, the World Bank, the White House," Bajaj said. "I wanted to open where I felt I'd have an international clientele, with people who had traveled.
" He was resting his elbows on a table in another Penn Quarter restaurant, Rasika. Besuited and stiffly pressed, he watched a stream of dishes emerge from the kitchen: a glossy trapezoid of tamarind-scented cod; a copper vessel of crisped, slivered okra tossed with curry leaves; and palak chaat, a house favorite that is essentially a fried spinach salad in yogurt dressing. Honey ginger duck, made with cashew nut, candied ginger and pulao rice, at Rasika. Rasika opened in 2005. Its critical success is close to unprecedented for an Indian-American restaurant. (Tabla, Danny Meyer and Floyd Cardoz's place in New York, was a notable exception before it closed in 2010.) Last October, Sietsema gave Rasika four stars, his highest rating, calling it "the best Indian restaurant in the country." Vikram Sunderam, executive chef of Rasika and its sister, Rasika West End, is an alumnus of the Bombay Brasserie in London, which Bajaj managed before coming to Washington. Rasika West End was inspired in part by the congestion inside the original, and its opening last year underscored what Bajaj calls his "strong passion to educate the American public" about Indian cuisine. It was local news when the Clintons celebrated their 37th anniversary there.
 Bajaj's newer Indian restaurants differ from the Bombay Club in style, not substance. All three serve authentic recipes tweaked to suit modern American tastes, prepared with top-shelf ingredients and visual flair. But where the Bombay Club's refined curry and tandoor oven dishes wouldn't puzzle anyone with a passing knowledge of Indian cuisine, presenting them in a hushed atmosphere subtly evocative of the British raj, both Rasikas serve more angular interpretations of Indian dishes less familiar in the West, offering them on small plates in dining rooms festooned with chic nods to the homeland. Bajaj is not the only one taking delight in the transformation. "All of us remember a time when we brought our friends over for Indian food and they were like, 'Ew, what is this?'" said Priya Dayananda, a KPMG lobbyist whose parents are from Bangalore. "The biggest gift Ashok has given this community is that he's made Indian food cool to eat."

Bajaj belongs to a vanishing breed of restaurateurs who have achieved acclaim without ever having worked behind a stove. "I am not a chef," he said. "But my restaurants are chef-driven." Bajaj, who has a throwback devotion to dark business suits, carries a cultivated air of mystery, which includes his skill at appearing to be in more than one of his restaurants at a time. He tries to visit each one at least once a day; Ardeo & Bardeo, his wine bar in the Cleveland Park neighborhood, is the only property he can't reach quickly on foot. "I'm never sure whether or not he has two twin brothers," said Tony Podesta, a well-known lobbyist and an investor in two local restaurants. "He knows who's eating in all of his restaurants all of the time." Bajaj's virtual omnipresence is part of the fancy interpersonal footwork that fuels his accomplishments at least as much as his nose for kitchen talent.
 The image of him conferencing tableside one afternoon with a politically prominent Rasika regular, bent at the waist from a distance that conveyed intimacy without invading personal space, was something to behold: two hyperlinks to power acknowledging each other's status with body language and the half-whispered exchange of information. greeting patrons_article.jpg Restauranteur Ashok Bajaj, center, greets patrons during a stop at Bibiana Osteria-Enoteca Bajaj "can explain the mechanics of a restaurant, but he's equally good at explaining how hospitality is different than service - you can teach a monkey to carry plates," said Christian Pendleton, a manager who oversees Bibiana, 701 and Nopa. "That's why he visits every restaurant, so he can say, 'Thank you very much,'" he said. "In D.C., that personal side is important." Pendleton was standing at Nopa's bar the night after its grand opening party.
Bajaj had just completed his daily visits to his other restaurants. Pendleton asked him to go greet a customer who had "been here seven times since Monday." (It was Thursday.) Bajaj keeps a case of the customer's favorite pinot grigio on hand even though it's not on the wine list. "It's what he likes," he explained. Brian Jones, another regular at Bajaj's restaurants, was eating in the adjacent dining room. Bajaj went to greet him, pose for a photograph and ask why he hadn't seen him at the opening party. Jones said he had never received an invitation. Bajaj, looking crestfallen, insisted one had been sent. He asked an employee, "Could you buy Brian Jones a drink or dessert or something?" He also told her to retrieve a copy of the party's guest list. "Show it to him," Bajaj said. Looking satisfied, Bajaj loosened his tie. "There is always someone to take care of," he said. © 2013 New York Times News Service