Complete crispy flounder at Fortunate Hazard. {Photograph} by Rachel Paraoan.
Fortunate Hazard was born as a delivery-only Chinese language-American pop-up within the thick of the pandemic and landed in Arlington as a carryout store. Now, founder and chef Tim Ma is increasing the idea right into a full-service restaurant in Penn Quarter. It’s obtained an entire new menu with crab lo mein and quick rib-bone marrow dumplings—plus a mahjong- and whiskey bar hidden within the again. It’s set to open Wednesday, Might 21.
“This began within the pandemic as a operate of the pandemic. That’s how Fortunate Hazard existed as a result of it needed to. It doesn’t imply that’s the way it needed to keep,” Ma says. “I obtained into eating places to have a restaurant like this.”
You will see that some acquainted Fortunate Hazard dishes like crab rangoons—right here they’re dusted in Outdated Bay—however the brand new menu, overseen by government chef Robbie Reyes, takes a extra refined method. Ma’s all-day cafe in Navy Yard, Any Day Now, is thought for its scallion pancake breakfast sandwiches. Fortunate Hazard provides allium pancakes full of all types of onions, and served with whipped tofu and caviar.
A Taiwanese noodle dish with scrambled eggs and tomato is reinterpreted as housemade egg noodles with a tomato-y XO sauce (made vegetarian with shiitake mushrooms). “It’s like an XO meets funky pomodoro sauce,” Reyes says. “Form of spicy.”
There can even be some giant format platters, like a Chinese language-spiced prime rib or Peking duck with lettuce wraps as an alternative of pancakes. Complete crispy flounder is showered in strands of ginger, scallion, and lemongrass, plus chili oil. It’s served with papaya salad and rice. The restaurant is open for dinner solely to start out, however Ma is seeking to broaden to lunch and takeout.
The restaurant, previously residence to the Partisan, is split into a number of totally different areas, beginning with a bar and eating room close to the doorway. There, you’ll discover Asian takes on basic cocktails, equivalent to a milky oolong tea old school or a gin and tonic with jasmine inexperienced tea tonic.
Head additional again and also you’ll enter the purple lantern-lit “Fortunate Membership,” the place you’re greeted by a Chinese language signal that primarily interprets to “let the Champagne fly and the great occasions roll.” The identical phrase hung in a Chinese language restaurant that Ma’s uncle owned in New York. The cocktails again listed here are just a little extra elevated and experimental.
Bar Director Sunny Vanavichai, who beforehand labored at Moon Rabbit and with Daikaya Group, took inspiration from natural teas in addition to conventional Chinese language drugs. She makes a lollipop out of Pei Pa Koa, an natural treatment for coughs that additionally supposedly “helps steadiness your life.” It garnishes the “James Carter,” a Manhattan variation with sesame-infused Japanese whiskey, an herbal-floral Italian amaro, and five-spice bitters. One other tea-infused cocktail, “Forbidden Knees,” is a play on a Bee’s Knees with smoky lapsang souchong honey plus some natural notes from yellow Chartreuse.
Head again even additional and also you’ll discover a small green-carpeted room with a handful of routinely shuffling mahjong tables and a menu of overproof whiskey and overproof basic cocktails (no meals). Ma beforehand developed the menu for Sparrow Room, a cocktail and mahjong parlor in Arlington that has since closed. The proprietor requested if Ma knew anybody who taught mahjong, so he and his dad volunteered. “My dad ended up doing two courses every week typically. It was highly regarded,” Ma says. They’ll each proceed to show weekly courses at Fortunate Hazard.
“The extra that persons are and launched to the sport, I feel is simply higher for the tradition,” Ma says.
Ma is an enormous fan of Jackie Chan, and significantly, the Rush Hour collection. In a single well-known scene, Chan and co-star Chris Tucker go to a Chinese language restaurant in Los Angeles searching for info, stroll by way of the kitchen, then bust right into a again room (run by Don Cheadle) the place everybody’s enjoying mahjong. “That was the inspiration for this room,” Ma says. “Folks will be capable to hear it taking place, however gained’t be capable to see it taking place.”
In the meantime, it’s shaping as much as be an enormous enlargement 12 months for Ma. He’s a companion in just lately opened Kata, a nightlife vacation spot in Penn Quarter. Tacocat, an Asian-fusion taco bar, is coming quickly to Western Market meals corridor in Foggy Backside. All-you-can-eat sushi restaurant Sushi Sato will arrive on H Avenue Northeast later this spring, and one other location of Any Day Now will observe within the neighborhood this fall. And along with opening a Fortunate Hazard kiosk that simply debuted at Nationals Park, Ma can even debut two extra of the Chinese language-American carryouts this 12 months—one on the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore and one other in Virginia.
Meals Editor
Jessica Sidman covers the individuals and tendencies behind D.C.’s food and drinks scene. Earlier than becoming a member of Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Meals Editor and Younger & Hungry columnist at Washington Metropolis Paper. She is a Colorado native and College of Pennsylvania grad.
