Prolific D.C. restaurateur Ashok Bajaj is returning to his Cleveland Park roots, shuttering Indian restaurant Bindaas at 3309 Connecticut Avenue NW, and replacing it with a new wine bar named Little Black Bird.
When Bindaas opened in the space seven years ago, it replaced Bardeo, which Bajaj opened as one of the first wine bars in the District in 2001.
The Aug. 6 closing has no impact on the Bindaas locations in Foggy Bottom or downtown.
The Cleveland Park pivot has nothing to do with business, which Bajaj says is good. Nor does it have anything to do with a lease dispute. A Bajaj affiliate owns the buildings.
“The Cleveland Park location has a smaller kitchen compared to the one downtown. Downtown has a larger menu, and customers could not compare the two,” said Bajaj, whose Knightsbridge Restaurant Group owns and operates a total of 10 well-known restaurants in D.C., including Bajaj’s first D.C. restaurant, The Bombay Club, Rasika and La Bise.
“Opening a new concept will also generate more energy,” he said.
It is not the first time Bajaj has made a radical change to his restaurants. In 2020, he closed longtime power dinner restaurant The Oval Room after 26 years and reopened it as the French restaurant La Bise.
Construction on the interior of the new Little Black Bird starts Aug. 7, with an expected opening date sometime in September.
Little Black Bird will seat 30 in the dining room and eight at the bar. The wine list will have 100 wines by the bottle, ranging from $44 to $90, and 12 by the glass ranging from $12 to $18.
The menu looks wide-ranging, from “tart flambe” and Icelandic cod, to branzino and lamb. On the dessert menu is a single malt butterscotch pudding flight.
On business in general for his restaurants, Bajaj says business is good, but still not back to pre-pandemic levels. Most of his restaurants are in or near downtown D.C., and he’s a proponent in pushes to get downtown office workers to return.
“If you can come downtown to eat, you can come downtown to go to work,” he said.
Bajaj says he is already working on his next restaurant project, but won’t make any announcement for a few weeks, other than this: “It won’t be downtown.”
