This post written by DCist contributor, Matt Cordell

After watching Jose Andres easily handle Bobby Flay a few weeks ago in Iron Chef “Battle Goat,” I expected to suffer the same treatment when I sat down at the newly relocated Oyamel. I prepared to be flayed like Flay. I thought I would be laid low by his ceviche, knocked out by his potables, and rendered dumb by the small plates of D.C.’s undisputed king of tapas. In the end, I’m a little sad to say, I fared far better than Bobby.

Andres started with an advantage; when I first walked into Oyamel, I was knocked off guard, overwhelmed with a strange sense of deja vu. Although I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, after I prodded a few customers, checked under the cushions, and jiggled the handle, I realized that Oyamel was a doppelgänger for Rasika, where I had dined just two nights earlier. Although adorned with the signature tin butterflies (“Oyamel” is a fir species native to Mexico and the preferred landing spot of the monarch butterfly), a video projection of a Mexican market above the ceviche bar, and a Gothic candelabra in the corner, the interior was uncannily similar.