What’s up, squad! Long time, no chat—I’ve been on the road much of the last week, first in Chicago for a fun girls’ weekend, and then in New York City for work. Chasing that Marriott status in cities across these great United States. I’m here for most of Memorial Day Weekend, and am glad to have some downtime at home and sleep in my own bed.
Before I left for my trips, I met up with Monica and Jenn at Compass Rose on 14th Street here in DC to celebrate Jenn’s 29th birthday. We didn’t have a reservation and went around 6:15pm on a Thursday night. We waited about 40-45 minutes for a table, but were able to grab a seat at the bar to enjoy a pre-dinner cocktail. Their bar is also full-service, so you can easily order food there—but since there were three of us, we thought it’d be best to wait it out for a table since it’d be easier to talk. It was so worth the wait because we were given the best table in the house—the booth right at the front window! Not only did the golden hour light show off, the ambiance was really set with the beautiful pillows, tapestries, and dishes adorning our table.
In addition to the main dining room where we ate, they also had a patio out front that was tented off with beautiful fabrics. They also have two prix fixe experiences—first is their Bedouin tent, which is a private dining experience available for parties of six to eight people. Then, they offer their Tour of the World family-style tasting menu that’s curated by the chef. You can snag reservations for the dining room and Tour of the World here and for the Bedouin tent here.
Compass Rose serves up street food from all over the world, which was such a fun experience because you don’t have to commit to one type of cuisine. Their dishes are meant to be shared, but we found they are much larger than your average tapas dish, which was a wonderful surprise. While we were intrigued by the prix fixe Tour of the World option, we had our eyes on a few dishes we were dying to try, so we picked our own food.
We ordered Bacalao Fritters from Portugal, Tacos al Pastor from Mexico, Sambuseh from Iran, Grilled Kale from Japan, and Mchicha Wa Nazi from Zanzibar. Everything we ate was amazing, but my top two dishes were the Bacalao Fritters, which were basically fancy fish sticks, and Tacos al Pastor, which had a good amount of kick. Jenn and I also split a bottle of the Compass Rose rosé wine, which I really enjoyed, so definitely don’t be shy about ordering their in-house label!
I loved everything about our dinner and would definitely go back. The one thing we were annoyed about was we had just paid our check and were finishing the last bit of our wine when the hostess came by to shoo us out of our table. We thought it was pretty rude and left a sour taste in our mouths. Totally understand it was a busy night, but we weren’t lingering and still were finishing up our wine—it had maybe been five minutes since they dropped the check off. Just poor form, in my opinion!
