Passion Fish

Dinner tonight was just good. Sometimes when I dine alone, the dinner is good intellectually: I spend time deconstructing the ingredients, criticizing minor chef decisions, eyeing other patrons, lamenting their poor conversation, and searching to find familiar and rewarding tastes in each bite. Other times dinners are good with friends because the food pales to the conversation and glides by one's senses without being noticed. However, some rare nights, the company and the food proceed in parallel, equally satisfying and varied. Tonight was a night like that...there was forboding lightning on the horizon but a patio table was open and my friend Mike and I had dinner at Passion Fish in Reston prior to a big step forward in his life.

Dining in Reston smacks of disingenuous; it's like claiming you went to the bowling alley and had a really delicious filet. Pretentious of me? Of course. But Reston means eight lane thoroughfares, Best Buys and Home Depots every block (interspered between Starbuckses), and architecture that looks like any other new, green glassy, high-risey amalgamation anywhere in Northern VA. But tonight we found a gem. Or maybe the whole place is full of gems and the abundance of SUVs driven by suburban environmentalists prohibits my seeing them.

The restaurant was charming. It was in the vortex of a semi-creepy planned community/shopping district (creepy in its formality, ninety degree angles, profusion of BMWs and men in boat shoes), but just on the cusp so that the panorama was calm with just casual passers by. We sat on the patio and soaked in the beauty both on our table and passing by on plates being delivered to neighboring tables. The couple behind Mike both ordered an entire fish. With its erect little tail saluting us as it was carried by above our heads. How fabulous.

So Passion Fish is fishy and Mediterranean, but with a splash of Asian. And the flavors are much more complementary than expected. Mike ordered a blue crab and corn chowder soup with crab meat and green onions. It was smooth, flavorful, and not overwhelmingly creamy; even hot, it was as refreshing as soup in the winter is soothing.

On the bottom left, you can see the silverware had little fish tails. It was really too cute by half, but somehow worked, even to an increasingly cynical diner and professional young woman like I appear to have become. It was like the Mickey Mouses ears-shaped butters at Disneyworld or ice cream creations where an upside down sugar cone is a hat...trite but visually consoling.

I had Peruvian ceviche. I have done ceviche a lot, most of it hovering somewhere around medicre to unremarkable. Tonight it was truly new and admirably innovative.

I was hungry so the picture is blurry, but yes, that's popcorn on top of my ceviche. It was fresh and spicy (with red onion, habanero pepper, lemon juice, and green olive oil) and the popcorn added salt and crunch that made it somehow taste like both beach and fair food. And you'll notice that it's encased in a bowl of ice. Someone tonight cared more about my food than I did and that makes me happy.

We stuck with light stuff to sample more. The following probably looks like an unappetizing mix of influences, but it fit. I'd try and more effectively weave in the theme of tastes proceeding in parallel, but I'm too tired. But, Mike got grilled octopus (with lovely squishy/crunchy suckers) with grilled halloumi cheese, all atop a little Greek (horiatiki) salad and drizzled with Tzatziki. Plus it had a purple sauce drizzled on top and baby croutons.

I got a mojito (with thick clusters of mint leaves and an unfortunately splintery piece of sugar cane) and a prettily-displayed California roll. The sushi may appear to diverge from these Mediterranean flavors, but I tasted the faintest glimmer of lemon juice in it, which brought the dinner back full circle. And it came with a cute little tagine-looking soy sauce holder.

The service was good; the waiter seemed to have bypassed the long sushi chef order backlog for us (we were hurrying) and was attentive, knowledgeable, and gave confident recommendations on both my drink and ceviche. The forboding lightening edged into the horizon, the rain never fell, and the press of time, like a current, took us off the patio and back out into the world.