Daikaya Izakaya

Well, fancy seeing you here again so soon! I imagine you're saying the same thing about me, but after a dinner of raw things, Japanese Glamour magazines, and a rice ball, what else is a girl to do?

I started my Restaurant Week with a restaurant from which it seemed I could get a good deal and benefit financially from a $35 menu. I did at Daikaya Izakaya, across the street to the Verizon Center and next to Graffiato.

So eager for Restaurant Week, I was parked and on their block before 5 pm for my 6 o'clock reservation, so dropped in to Graffiato for a glass of wine. After writing four postcards (an amateur food critic is a woman of letters after all), I wandered to the next store front and proudly told the hostess I had a reservation: she frigidly told me that they didn't take reservations and I must have meant upstairs (I had wandered into their "casual" ramen shop downstairs). The signage wasn't clear (particularly given the fact I'd already walked by the storefront twice and missed it), but I left and went upstairs, with a very self-satisfying eye roll.

Upstairs was much more hospitable, until the masses of Restaurant Week diners descended densely as I was finishing my meal. The hostess offered me a magazine (I should have specified my preferred language), so I flipped through a Japanese-language fashion magazine I couldn't understand but that was heavier on pictures than articles.

I started with a cocktail off the happy hour menu, which featured an image of a cartoon cat (much more endearing that it sounds but also representative of an affinity for animal drawings I don't entirely understand). It (the drink) sported shochu and homemade ginger beer, an ideal palate cleanser with bite and spice.

                                   

The first item was raw octopus, marinated in wasabi and served with wasabi leaves and diced granny smith apples. The flavor was exquiste -- delicate but spicy, in the nose rather than the mouth -- but the octopus, although in small pieces, was overly chewy. I ordered tuna poke -- a Hawaiian dish -- a la carte and while the color of the tuna was beautiful and the shredded nori (seaweed) a vision, it tasted of too much onion. I mean the green, white, and fried garlic kind.

                                   

The next dish was my favorite: grilled avocado with a pool of ponzu sauce, a daub of wasabi paste, nori salt (dried seaweed mixed with sea salt -- so essentially salt on salt), and a spritz of lemon. It was rich, smoky, warm, and acidic and I scraped off as much as I could from that helpless avocado shell. 

                                   

Diners during Restaurant Week are offered a skewer of some type of meat to precede the main course and I had beef tenderloin. It had a yakitori sauce -- it wasn't syrupy but was stilll sweet -- and in addition to trying to sop off as much as I could from my plate, I also almost managed to ingest the whole stick in my enthusiasm (i.e., I gently jabbed my throat by not paying attention).

                                 

While earnest, I was also savoring at a slower rate than most diners, as my fish was brought at the same time: dining alone does that to a person's food consumption time. When food partnerless, I find it's pretty fun to ogle the plates in front of me (also perhaps the result of not having a text-full magazine). 

At any rate, the main course was miso-glazed salmon, which was moist (and partly raw), the skin (mostly) crispy, and the carrot puree sweet and rich. The pickle on top was mildly briny and a bit floral -- investigating a bit, my waitress told me there is one chef in the kitchen who is the keeper of the pickle barrel, set up before the restaurant was even open. 

                                 

After this many courses in (and with only one more dinner course to go), I briefly gave thought to the restaurants I passed coming to the restaurant from my car, in the event $35.14 later I still needed some actual sustenance. The rice "ball" was more than expected, however, a thick but flat pyramid of dense rice with a pulled pork filling. The waitress instructed me to use the seaweed as a sanwich and dig in: my lips kept getting stuck on the moistureless, dry paper-like vegetable, but I imagine it's normally eaten in humid, people-filled streets.

                                 

                                 

                                       These ladies clearly love Restaurant Week too.

The last course was chocolate ice cream with miso-banana caramel and banana chips (which were extremely subtle except in diluted color). It was a fine, if simple, dessert, but was charmingly served in old stemware.

Overall, it was a pleasure -- hip yet seemingly traditional and with dishes owning bold flavors -- but still lacked the sedated simplicity of places like Izakaya Seki (I threw down the gauntlet without having proven to you, dear reader, that I have in fact been there). You'll see -- just maybe not this week.

Kapnos, Tabard Inn

It's that time of year again: when restaurants I've never heard of (a more often occurrence now) sell food that may or may not be worth $35 and I write it up either in rapturous or disciminatory terms. Whether it's delicious or overwrought, I love this season. When others get their gym membership in early January, I figure out how I can ingest delicious calories without overdoing it over six days.

The fun starts tomorrow, but it informally began Friday night, with a lovely dinner with an old friend. We dined at Kapnos -- which incidentally is on the top 100 for 2014 -- and caught up in the far corner of very busy restaurant. In true Mediterranean fashion, we ate for hours, nibbling on Greek and Turkish delights.

It's a nice place, mostly. It's very crowded with the masses of coats -- and a bit noisy. The waitress hovered quite a bit (we did stay for three hours after our 6pm reservation), but the hallmark of Greek cuisine is the seeming effortlessness of complicated dishes and an uniterrupted meal. We didn't get much of either, but we did have some exquisite allusions to the Mediterranean.

I had a bright and gin-y lemonade and we shared chickpea dip. It was creamy and smooth, with chopped herbs and a side of oven baked flatbread (unlike nearly anything I've ever tried, simultaneously seeming both charred and fried).

We shared gigantes (beans) that looked lovely with their fancy accoutrements (flowers, stems, and bulbs), but the beans weren't all uniformly soft.

I ordered lamb tartare, perhaps my favorite dish. The lamb was finely chopped and smooth, served like a brightly colored sorbet, with small bits of diced vegetables on the side and small, creamy and crispy croquettes on the side. It was elegant but not self-conscious.

We ordered cauliflower, which was less roasty than we expected and heavy on the sauce...

And a potato and garlic phyllo pie, which was spiralled into a many-ringed circle. Its sunny side up egg was bright, but we mainly nibbled.

I ordered the semolina cake, hearkening back to my true top 100 days and the obligatory dessert. It tasted a bit like a Mediterranean madaleine. The surrounding sauce was made of persimmons, orange, and pistachios, jabbed with little bits of meringue. I'd not order it again, but it looked pretty.

I would have been more than happy to have for dessert what I had for an appetizer the next day, and it was a relief to vacate our table at Kapnose for a little peace and quiet and to liberate the waitress from her overly interested hovering. (Can it be true that I'm writing up two restaurants at once?) The man friend and I joined two of his lovely friends for brunch at the Tabard Inn. 

Tabard Inn, a gem of a institution with a dark parlor, a warm fire, and a heartwarming mash up of pop art and kitsch, is known for its donuts. These aren't fancy donuts -- with exotic filling, infusions of cheese, or hip bacon bits -- but rather, donuts. With a side of whipped cream.

My cocktail was sufficiently girly (prosecco with St. Germain)...

...Light bubbles that could only be undone by pork belly, grits, and fried oysters. Hello New Years Resolution (I have been reading the Washingtonian's magazine dedicated to the top 100 of 2014 all weekend).

My kind friends, as new as they are to the concept of my actual authorship of anything to accompany these photos, even ensured I snapped their brunch items in the best light.

With Restaurant Week upon us in only a few hours, I hope this prodigal amateur food blogger will be here again very soon!

Michael's Noodles

I'm already back--I forgot that I like eating and writing in such quick succession.

My adventurous noodle eater man and I went to Rockville, Maryland yesterday, building our entire afternoon activities around a Top 100 Cheap Eats restaurant, Michael's Noodles. Rockville, as I have noted in past culinary excursions, seems like it's a prime hub for shops-that-Americans like--DSW, Dick's Sporting Goods, Bed Bath and Beyond (where I used three large blue coupons), etc.--but unfortunately also seemed to entertain all DC area drivers who wanted to go anywhere. That means there was an amazingly dense amount of traffic.

 

After we stopped for halvah at one Middle Eastern grocery and picked up meat pies at a Russian grocery--and endured Maryland traffic--we were ready for food. 

It's always an adventure stepping into a top 100 restaurant of any variety, particularly ones on this list. We were greeted--unofficially--by a young boy taking a picture of the art in the entryway; I halfway assumed he must have been a food blogger too, so I felt at ease (he was a bored kid at a multiple-adult dinner, so this was only one of many diversions we saw him participating in). It was a good sign, though; it was loud with lots of families.

 

We used the Washingtonian write-up as our starting point because the menu was eight pages long with about 30 items on each page. Intestines, duck blood, jellyfish, mustard greens, squid, fish head, and live fish--almost certainly the head too--are on the menu. We started with tea and beer; those choices were easy.

 

 

We started with Szechuan wantons, exquisite little gathered-dough packages with a rich meat filling and chili oil and scallions soaked into every little dough rivulet. Proud chopstick users, we couldn't savor them well enough with chopsticks so we broke out the forks. And because they were really slippery.

 

 

We ordered dumplings next. The dumpling dough was thick and soft on the inside but crisp and crunchy: nothing like the glorious effects of food that comes out of a fry pan.

 

 

I had the dan dan noodles. I had no idea what that entailed but the alliteration was too alluring. Nevertheless, I was still surprised at what it looked like: lightly steamed spinach took up half the bowl and the other half were Michael's homemade noodle covered with dried, shredded pork. I gingerly took a little of each noodles and spinach and put it on my little plate; our waitress soon came over, tsked me, and stirred everything together. Then it tasted good; she dredged up all the sauce at the bottom and coated the dry pork with its sweet sauce.

 

 

My co-cheap eats-er demurred on trying my dish as his "would be the star of the show," or something similarly overconfident. He was right: pork, chicken, shrimp, and tons of vegetables were in a thin gravy and floated on top of a nest of crispy, thin noodles. The longer it took us to work our way through his lunch, the more the noodles soaked up the sauce and the better they became.

 

 

So, we're one more cheap eats joint down, with about a million more restaurants, calories, and meals (but not dollars!) to go. One could say the same for the photos of leaves I intend to take until they are all gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ris

Today was a day for the blog. Well, I took the day off and got an expensive haircut too, but it was really a day for the blog: a boca sola meal, a glass of wine in the middle of the day, a gratuitous dessert (after more than enough food) and a novel on the table (even though it was more decorative than utilitarian as I was near a window with much people-watching).

This morning, after already deciding to take the day off, I took a gander at the Washingtonian Top 100 list for 2013. As you may know, my 99 culinary adventures (save Citronelle) were from the 2010 list, so I was curious what I have missed in the meantime. Of the 20 or so I have not visited, Ris--near the heart of fancypants Georgetown--was one.

 

I'd heard it mentioned--by a fancypants colleague--but rarely have found myself in the Westend, except twice notably at the Westend Bistro, also quite sophisticated. I cleverly drove, which I note sarcastically, as I barely made my reservation on time despite departing about 20 minutes earlier than I needed to. I'm shocked I made it at all, in light of my delightful morning Old Town lollygagging (stopping to photograph the sidewalk).

 

...More than once.

 

 

As is the Boca Sola custom (I'll admit I'm a bit rusty), I thought of my dear readers when I ordered. That means, I ordered everything on the menu I thought I might possibly be able to eat most of, which ended up being three dishes and two drinks. I started with the Scallop Margarita, a sort of scallop ceviche with quartered oranges, chili peppers, avocados, and a scoop of tequila sorbet, with a salt rim and chips. It was terrific--I savored each bite, scooped up every last bit with my chips, and admired each forkful's unique blend of textures.

 

 

I enjoyed it so thoroughly, though, the kitchen evidently had expected me to have finished dining 10 minutes earlier, because my lunch had been under the heat lamp for a while (I learned few things at Santa Fe Cattle Company in Oklahoma as a waitress, but one of them was that food kept under heat lamps inherently depreciates in taste).

 

That means my food--salad, yogurt, pomegranate seeds and all--had been under the heat lamp while I was still rapturing about scallops.

 

It was a lovely lunch but its arrival was rushed; post-scallops, I had read about one paragraph of my book before lunch arrived. Since a blog is one big soapbox anyway, a key frustration about lunch dining is restaurants' bias that you want to eat quickly and leave. My lunches during the workweek are usually things like Generic Asian at an airport because I'm flying somewhere, so I haven't encountered this problem frequently. Nevertheless, I can't understand why a fine restaurant (as Ris is) would sacrifice dining pacing below a quick meal. I had a book and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc... and nothing but time. 

 



The grilled swordfish fish was still delicious--flavorful and juicy and just enough char to balance out the richness of it--and was served atop Greek yogurt, a small ribbony cucumber-radish salad, with sides of "mint tabbouleh" (nearly all bulgher wheat and little mint) and pomegranate seeds. The fish was tasty but since it hadn't come directly off the grill, lacked the mix of textures--of char and moist flesh--had it not been sitting and warming up. Similarly, warmish yogurt gives me the heebie jeebies. 

 

Dessert was lovely, though--I had a warm chocolate tart with ice cream and caramel popcorn. The brown butter ice cream that was supposed to accompany it was rum butter, but was still delicious.  The interior of the tart--a separate  melty puck of chocolate gooeyness--was warm and rich and the chocolate crusty cup surrounding it was crisp and stuck to the plate with caramel. I followed each bite with either the ice cream, popcorn, or little bits of chocolate crumbs on the plate; it was a great accompaniment to people watching. While pondering bite pairings, I saw an Indian diplomat hop into her blackened out Suburban and saw a handful of personal security officers head into Ris' back room.

 

I can complain as an amateur blogger that it wasn't fully up to snuff, but as a lady playing hooky (don't worry, I asked my boss) it was a treat. And treats were par for the course this week.

 

My non-mountain man and I had fancy hot dogs earlier this week from Haute Dog and Fries up the street: "The Monroe" on the left (a hot dog with chopped jalapenos, grilled onions, and mango-pineapple salsa) and some German sausage monstrosity (with sauerkraut and brown mustard). That was a treat--he indulged me in glasses of tempranillo and a cheese plate right before. What a guy.

 

 

Earlier in the week, I caught up with Christine at Bazin's in Vienna, a lovely, sophisticated-but-homey bistro, where we collectively had a butter lettuce salad, tuna tartare, tagiatelle bolognese, and sea bass with wasabi mashed potatoes. Since my camera has no flash, this is the only photo that resembles what it is meant to represent. 

 

 

Then there's the normal treats, thankfully, trickless. Happy Halloween and happy blog-reading in near real-time!

 

Gom Ba Woo and Other October Culinary Adventures

I finally have a hook. A headline. A justification for why I'm writing this catch-up blog entry at all: I knocked off a restaurant from one of my lists.

I'd like to say it's the elusive Citronelle, so I can finally have completed the Washingtonian Top 100 list. (Or that I have updated my Top 100 check-off list to reflect restaurants I have actually been to). But, extensive water damage and perhaps a more desirable location in New York City has prevented this amateur food blogger from a very simple dream, completing a 1 million calorie adventure and hitting up this purported paragon of French cuisine.

Nevertheless, I can proudly say I don't need escargots and a high-brow Georgetown location to bring me back to the blog; instead,  I will write to you about the glories of dining in a strip mall, drinking rice water, and dining in Annandale, which permits pumpkin patch viewing beforehand and a trip to Sears afterwards.

We headed to Gom Ba Woo, one of many Annandale establishments on the Washingtonian's Top 100 Cheap Eats. We parked and assessed our surroundings: a shoddy looking grocery store off yonder, an odd looking karaoke bar next door--with some weird looking cartoon characters smiling from the walls--and our future blog-worthy dining experience. Everyone knew we didn't belong when we went inside, but that only made our waitress welcome us more.

We started with panchan, Korean appetizers, which feed a nasty sort of dependence: after either a bite of kimchee or the pickled, spicy cucumbers, I coughed and teared up until the bit of chili stuck in my respiratory system decided to abandon its position. To help it out, I had a bit of mayonaise-soaked apples in a Waldorf-esque salad. It was great fun, having vegetables that on their own are quite unsophisticated: cabbage, cucumbers, sprouts... and then seeing them accesorized with sesame oil, chili, and vinegars. We washed it down with cold glasses of water that tasted delicately of rice.

Then we each had soups: broths with hunks of tender meat and big bones, in a ghostly liquid filled with wispy eggs, clear noodles, and unidentified chunks of a root vegetable. I'd like to call my dining partner my man friend--or better yet, my Mountain Man (what a lovely acronym for its alliteration alone)--but I think I'll stick to "he" and "him" out of respect for his urban, sophisticated sensibilities and his lack of living in, well, the mountains.

But he does laugh at jokes like this. Everyone loves a little scatological humor.

There has been much dining here in Virginia, however, that for some reason hasn't or couldn't merit inclusion in top 100 lists. As I am catching up, please forgive the flashcard-style of my food recounting, but consider these culinary highlights!

There were three types of delicious cake at former neighbor Steve's wedding--buttercreams, mollasses icings, ganache, you name it. The cake was so good, we took video.

There was fancy French food, when we finally got to Le Diplomate, to celebrate Sonia's birthday.

There was fancy triple cream with Vidalian onion jam, courtesy of my brother.

 

There was a wonderful special sushi roll at our new favorite sushi place, Zento (predominately because it boasts legitimately-cheap happy hour specials), a tuna roll with ginger, cilantro, jalapeno, and tuna.. and also a really photogenic masago-confettied eel roll.

 There were impossibly flaky turnovers from a Russian grocery store in Fairfax.

 

Then, apple picking...

...And eating of apple derivatives (cider donuts and homemade applesauce).

There was a delightfully enthusiastic birthday cake for Yiayia.

There was a surprisingly sophisticated dinner at Zaytinya....

 

...Only because of the event it preceded.

 

Even Trent Reznor would have to appreciate tapas like these.