Gallery Restaurant and Lounge

Gallery Restaurant and Lounge is a fairly new eatery in Silver Spring. It has received great reviews for its Nuevo Latino cuisine. Since the once up-and-coming Silver Spring has now sprung, it feels urban enough to have its own Restaurant Week, and guess which restaurant was on the list…exactly. So, on Friday night, we braved the cold to try out the goods at Gallery, and it was worth it.

My first impression when I walked into the restaurant was “Wow, I’m so not hip enough to be here.” That impression basically remained throughout our entire 2 hour meal. The restaurant is built in an old factory building. The first floor has a lounge/bar type atmosphere. The second floor is the restaurant/dance floor/VIP area. Yup, it even has a VIP area! As you can imagine, after seeing all of this, I figured that the food would be subpar – that the restaurant was more interested in maintaining an atmosphere of hip-ness rather than food-ness. I was wrong. The food was actually quite good.

M decided to order off of the regular menu, which meant mostly tapas, and I decided to go with the Restaurant Week menu. I started with the Chicken Chili Soup, which came with fancy looking tortilla chips and sour cream. The soup was good, not great. It could have had a bit more kick to it.

For my entrée, I ordered the latin version of Moules Frites, which was mussels with fried yucca. The mussels were fantastic!! They were juicy and fresh, and the fried yucca was perfect as well. I could have just sopped up all of the mussel broth with the fried yucca, and I tried, but it didn’t work out as well as I was hoping.

For dessert, I was wavering between the guava cheesecake and the Mexican chocolate ice cream. Just guess which one I chose…YUP, I went with the ice cream. It was soooo good – very creamy, with almond slivers, shaved chocolate pieces, and a mélange of spices.

Overall, our meal was great. We decided we would go back to Gallery again – just maybe on the earlier side, so we don’t feel so unhip.