Cafe Trope

I cannot believe that they are closed but alas I would say I actually can.
The food was good when I visited in mid-​January but the service was a little slow even though we were the only ones in their.

Great news!!! This place is closed! As expected, it has gotten the response its food deserves, and the slow death has occurred. Too bad this seems to happen to all the places in this location (which would seem to be pretty good for traffic). Now we have a chance of a genuinely good restaurant in there.

CLOSED
Crowds are gone. Restaurant is shuttered & the space is for rent.
Given the crowds this place got after it first opened and how awful the service was during this initial buzz period, although I’m disappointed its gone because the food was really good, I can’t say I feel sorry for the management because they BLEW it.
Note to prospective restauranteurs in the DC area: DO NOT screw up during your launch period. This city will not give you a second chance.

I was pleasantly surprised by this place. I took some colleagues here for lunch. The food and service were very good. The place is quiet enough t have a conversation without shouting, Décor was nice. Prices were fair/​average for the neighborhood. I’ll go back.

I went here for lunch, and thought it was nice. Prices were a little high. Food portions were reasonable, which I appreciated (they are a bit small for someone with a big appetite). They had several nice vegetarian options. I ordered the quinoa salad, which was great and actually unique. Outdoor setting was nice.

High end Carribean. It’s a noble attempt to blaze a trail in Dupont and break the cycle of the typical italian/​american/​mexican fare that’s available in the area. This place could have potential.
The service was slow but friendly, the portions were small but satisfying, and they were tasty. I had the tuna tartarte whih was done well, as well as a glass or merlot. All were good but not exceptional.
Overall this was a not-​so-​memorable place, but the décor is nice and the outdoor seating is good for people watching. maybe i should try there for brunch and it would change my mind… maybe…

Really? That’s it?
That would be the theme of this restaurant. It fell a touch short of satisfying. We came in around 730pm on a Friday and had no problem getting a seat. we had to wait a little to get water (which for being 100 degrees outside I was hoping they would run over to fill our glasses). We ordered some glasses of wine, which were reasonably priced, so they get a +1 for not overcharging. The meals were reasonably priced ($ 15-​$ 19 I believe) and they all sounded tasty. One thing we noticed was that there were no appetizers, just salads… kind of a let down. We ordered, friends ordered the sea scallops with curry, the tuna tartar and I ordered the stuffed shrimp with crabmeat. We also were intrigued by the Truffled macaroni & goat cheese so we ordered that too. The meals came out quickly-​But right off the bat we noticed something– Where is the food? Appetizer sized portions for dinner? Luckily we had all scarfed down some yummy bread (another +1) to hold us over. The food was «eh» or at least mine was. The shrimp was overcooked and chewy and the crabmeat was almost non-​existent. BUT the lobster bisque-​ish sauce was the winner. The mini side of a mango salad tasted overwhelmingly like basil so I just picked at it. The truffled mac and cheese– so a waste– the pairing of goat cheese with truffles really did not work out well
We decided to pass on dessert as the pairings sounded strange and after the truffled macaroni and goat cheese fiasco we decided not to risk it.
Would I go back? Maybe, but there’s so much better out there in Dupont, I would rather try some place else.

Overall a pretty fantastic dinner. Café Trope is a high-​end caribbean restaurant in Dupont.
I had the «Cucumber and Tomatillo Gazpacho» to start, followed by Jerk Chicken «lollipops», and finished with the «Rum & Apple Cider Cured Pork Tenderloin with Collards Greens». To be honest, this was way too much food, but I never have the chance to eat Caribbean back in Honolulu, so I ordered much more than I could eat.
The gazpacho was light and spicy, and a perfect start to a heavily spiced meal. The Jerk Chicken was pretty standard stuff done well; juicy dark meat coated with a spicy rub.
Typically I order pork in a restaurant and am let down. It usually comes dry and near tasteless. Here though the pork was moist and tasty.
I ate at the bar, which had a nice casual atmosphere. The crowd was friendly and the service was good.

which beautiful coupling inspired curry shrimp and grits? delish!
friends, there is no sharing this dish. get your own.

We stopped in at Café Trope for brunch and it was alright… the food was good, but the portions are fairly small for brunch. I was fine with my order, but the boyfriend was still hungry at the end. My coconut French toast didn’t really taste like coconut, but the turkey sausage was very good. I also ordered a side of fried plantains that I was quite happy with. He ordered corned beef hash and was not very excited with it. The service was good, although the server seemed awkward and unexperienced… but you have to start somewhere, I guess. Overall, I wasn’t super impressed, but I’ll wait to make a final judgment call after making a trip for dinner.

Amazing food (the collard greens!) but really really weird service. The drinks came out after my salad, there was no bread served to our table (despite bread being on all the other tables) and the waitress was strangely chatty and bizarre. Also — not a great by-​the-​glass wine list.
The location is great, the food is spot on and the interior is nice, just be aware of the less than stellar service!

A very impressive restaurant, with innovative dishes and great service. The young owner (and chef, I think) has great ideas, good pairings, and has attracted a bright, attentive staff. The wine list is well chosen, with good variety and quality.
The interior décor is modern and very well executed, with wood gridwork and faux finishes, and very good lighting. The dishes we tried were all great — I especially remember the pear salad and the jerk chicken lollipops (which are quite spicy, with a sauce reminiscent of mole).
Prices are very reasonable for what you get. Strongly recommended.

Solid 4 stars. I used to pass this restaurant everyday when I lived in DC, and never ventured in. Rewind 4 years later, and with the blessed existence of great Unilocal reviews, I decided to give it a go.
Jury says? Great! i loved loved loved the artichoke zucchini and lemon salad, the quinoa feta cheese vegetarian dish, and the jerk chicken lollipop drum sticks.
The service is a little slow and awkward, hence the 4 stars. Still, a solid restaurant on P street.

Boo. I mean, UBER BOO. When my friend invited me and The Wife out to come to this place, I had no idea was a nightmare I was in store for. Let’s go down the adventure…(all times are approximate except for the 0:00, 0:10, and 1:00 marks)
0:00 — Was seated soon after arrival. I wasn’t terribly pleased with having a table so close the door (it’s cold outside!!), but hey, I can let it go for a good meal. We start to peruse the menu and quickly make our selections since we were rather hungry.
0:05 — No server. No water. We’re chatting, but wondering what’s up.
0:10 — Dick mode kicks in. I get up. Quietly speak to the hostess and ask for our server since we don’t even have water yet. A server comes out. Exclaims in tense tones, «that’s not my table!» He’s reminded that it is.
0:13 — Server comes over and apologizes for the confusion. He attempts to make an attempt at humor — he fails horribly. We quickly give him our order and he disappears. Buddy and I postulate on whether or not he smoked a few bowls before coming to work.
0:15 — Wine comes out. I ask him to fill our water glasses first — I’m usually not one to do an initial tasting on the wine after chewing gum. I need to rinse the palate! Waiter disappears and gets water before opening wine.
0:20 — Wine comes back out. He pours the sample. I ask to see the cork first. I get concerned since there appears to be some bleeding along the cork which makes me question the taste of the wine. I smell the glass — a mild cork smell but no mold. I taste it. Bleh. For a French wine, I’m wondering if someone just pissed in a bottle. I ask him if he smells cork — the waiter says no. I give him the benefit of the doubt (hey, some wines need to breathe first).
0:30 — Salads come out for me and my buddy. Too bad the ladies’ entrees came out too. We all eat. Then we wait.
1:00 — I finally get irritated again. I get up and ask for the manager. Badger Russell III comes out and I ask him if we can speak somewhere quiet. I explain to him how the service had been inexcusable and the meals still hadn’t come out yet despite the ladies getting the entrees while my buddy and I got our salads. He quickly apologies and looks into the issue. Tells me the meal is comped in its entirety.
1:10 — Our food comes out. I ordered the Venison. I got two medallions the size of junior York peppermint patties. I eat those with a few scoops of the sides.
1:20 — We finish our meals and Badger comes and apologizes. He gives us his business card. The waiter is nowhere to be seen. Another waiter takes our plates. My wife observes the waiter and Badger discussing how I said I wasn’t hungry anymore but cleaned the plate. I wish I had seen it — I would have told them I only ate the venison and left the rest.
1:30 — We finally get up and leave.
Overall, in a situation like this where the manager goes out of his way to take care of the tab due to the service, I would be more generous with my rating. However, I have to say that the food at dinner time didn’t make up for the spotty service. When I pulsed the other members of the party, they all agreed that the cuisine was lackluster. My buddy ordered the curried chicken and left with room in his stomach. My wife ordered the oysters but left wondering how four oysters were ever a meal. My buddy’s girl ordered the chickpeas and spinach and vowed never to do it again.
So how did it all end? We still made our movie — but we ended up having drinks and eating garlic fries at Gordon Biersch afterward to make up for the less than stellar meal. Sorry Badger — your boys totally ruined it for me and my friends.

EXCELLENT! Great food, great service. Good wine list. Location rocks! I didn’t like the crabcakes though.

Café Tropez offers French-​Caribbean cuisine and we tried their tasting menu last night which was 50.00 per person with a glass of wine. Since the restaurant was so new, we didn’t have high expectations of the place, and the old restaurant, 21P, always looked kind of sad and empty. I have to say, I liked EVERYTHING I ate!
Our waiter said that the dishes were on the small side and we wouldn’t be uncomfortably full, but I couldn’t finish my entrée and wound up taking my dessert home (probably because we had fried dumplings and A and J for lunch).
We had:
Lemon artichoke salad/​pear and Roquefort cheese salad
Jerk chicken lollipops/​adobe duck
shrimp with avocado and some kind of mustardy sauce
filet minon/​grilled lamb chop
some kind of chocolate lava cake/​banana cupcake and coconut cream cheese frosting
Sorry for not being more descriptive, but I’m still a little bit fuzzy this morning…

Café Trope sits in a spot that has been the curse of a long string of restaurants over the 15 years that I’ve lived around here. Each time a new one has opened, I’ve thought «Not bad, but not good enough to beat the curse.» And I’ve been, sadly, correct. Café Trope seems easily capable of living a long and happy life here, and should draw people from all over, once they’ve tried it.
The interior is very nicely, warmly done. This is actually prime real-​estate, on a very central corner, with lots of glass, and it’s surprisingly huge. But the space is divided up into a number of rooms so it never feels too big. And then there’s the food.
This is a restaurant with a vision — it knows exactly what it wants to be and has gone after that with vigor. FIrst, it’s French Carribbean, and there are no dishes that seem out of place, or like afterthoughts. It all fits. Second, they’re serious about their ‘medium plates’ concept: «bigger than tapas, smaller than most entrees», they patiently explain to each new customer. This means normal, healthy amounts of food, assembled expertly from outstanding ingredients. So, you can eat here happily if you’re the kind of person who hates leaving half of each plate behind at most American restaurants, or you can eat a ton of food but get to try a bunch of things. Whichever. For me, two of their plates was plenty, especially if I want room for desert.
The spicy pork salad was outstanding: two good slices of really perfect, crazy-​tender pork loin, covered in a spicy sauce. It sits on top of a salad of mesclun greens, green beans, and onions pickled or marinated to be tangy. The dressing is a light, citrusy kind of thing, so you’re getting this wonderful, savory pork, the hot sauce, and all these other vibrant flavors all at the same time. Not a single thing out of place.
The squash and mushroom «pilau» was totally unassuming, but perfectly executed. The rice was just right, with the perfect amount of a lightly-​flavored oil on it. Chunks of the quash and the mushrooms throughout, in the right proportions. There are no super strong flavors here, but if you dial back your palate a bit, and listen, (esp. after the pork salad) it all fits together superbly.
Last, I tried one of the fish dishes, with a sauce of tomatoes, olives, & capers. This one was again great ingredients, and was headed someplace very interesting, but never quite got there. To me, it was a little too sweet, and the flavors didn’t all show. But it was certainly true to the French-​Carribbean theme, and was better than 80 percent of the other dishes you’d find like it, so I’m only nitpicking here.
The wine list seems very nice, with about 5 red and 5 white selections available by the glass, plus a bunch of half bottles of very fine wines, which is rare. (I loved a white bordeaux they have by the glass.)
Service was friendly, efficient, and very knowledgeable. They knew both the menu and the wine list very well. Price-​wise, this menu isn’t as cheap as it first looks. But you can have two very good dishes for $ 18 – 25. If you need a third, it starts to be expensive for this neighborhood, but you’ll still be getting a big bang for your buck, considering that’s 3 courses.
Particularly considering that this restaurant has only been open for 3 weeks, I think it’s a great success. I’ll be back soon, working my way through the very diverse, creative menu.

We happened by while on a trip from Chicago and decided to stop in because of the interesting (yet totally unreadable from across the street) sign. It turns out that Café Trop just opened last night (the 28^th of December) and so the place was relatively empty, but had a few parties there.
They offer a prixe fixe menu as well as a la carte – my boyfriend went for the 3-​course meal and I did a la carte, and we were both satisfied. The wine menu was good and the prices on the medium-​sized plates were very reasonable. Between us, we had the Caesar salad, the fois gras, the ox tail soup, and the lobster bisque. We also had the goat cheese & truffle mac & cheese as well as the fried plantains.
The fois gras was good, but I liked it better when I separated out the liver from the french toast and cranberries (they were good separately, but the toast & cranberry was too much for the liver together, I thought). The lobster bisque AND the ox tail were to die for – I felt like I got a ton of ox tail soup for the price (only $ 10). The goat cheese and truffle mac & cheese was absolutely divine too. I would recommend it to anyone who goes there. (The fried plantains were okay; they weren’t particularly special, but they were also only $ 3).
Overall, we were extremely happy with our meal and our superior service. We felt like the sign could use some serious improvement, but otherwise we were happy with everything we had and felt like the prices were very good. Hit up this spot and check it out, at least. I would absolutely go back if I lived in the area!
Edit: Argh, I tried to make this review for «Café Trope» but Unilocal chopped off the «e» and now it’s just Trop. I wish I knew how to fix it.