rivka

After I made my earlier post,

curiousangel and I took a long hot shower together, got dressed up, and went to DC. For Christmas, my brother had given us two tickets to see an Andras Schiff concert at the Kennedy Center. I had somehow expected it to involve an orchestra - Schiff is a pianist - but it was just one man, a piano, and an all-Mozart program. It was absolutely lovely. He has the gift of making complex and ornate music sound simple. I realized that it's been a very long time since I've been out to hear classical music - if fact, Misha and I had never before gone together. That's strange, given that we both like it. We'll have to hear more.

The concert was at 5:00, which made it perfect to follow with dinner.

curiousangel picked a place from the Washington Post restaurant reviews: Kaz Sushi Bistro. We'd been hoping for something a little unusual and were not at all disappointed - this was not our standard sushi order. Take a look at their specialty menu, which they offer in addition to more standard sushi pieces and rolls.

In addition to sushi, they serve "small plates," which are sort of appetizer-ish. We started with sea trout Napoleon, subtly spicy diced raw trout with scallions and peanuts, stacked in a tower with two crispy won ton skins. Then the Japanese-style duck confit with hachou-miso sauce, which turned out to be quite a lot of duck, shredded in a strong sweet salty sauce, and served in three little rice-paper cups with a dollop of pureed sweet potato in the center of the plate. I don't normally like sweet potatoes, but they went amazingly well with the duck. And then we had sushi. The interesting thing about this place was that instead of using all their creativity on rolls, they did interesting things with nigiri sushi. Thus we had salmon with mango sauce, tuna with foie gras (largely because we see foie gras on Iron Chef all the time, and neither one of us had ever had it), seared salmon belly with soy-lemon sauce, seared sea scallop with lemon and sea salt (incredible mouthfeel - firm, almost browned on top, and then dissolving into nothingness on the tongue just below the seared surface), tuna tartare roll (tuna, sesame seeds, mildly hot spices), and a handful of simple pieces: flounder, sea trout, yellowtail, yellowtail belly (again, we were curious. "What's the difference between yellowtail and yellowtail belly?" "I don't know. Let's find out."). We passed up, reluctantly, the lobster meat with wasabi mayonnaise. For dessert, I had ginger creme brulee and Misha had the raspberry and strawberry they used to decorate my creme brulee. It was a perfectly marvelous, decadent, luxurious, stimulating meal. And just a few Metro stops down from the Smithsonian - so we'll definitely be finding our way back.

The only thing to mar the evening was the rain. Torrents of rain. Almost no visibility on the drive home from the Metro station, and standing water on the road because it was coming down too fast to drain away. But we made it home safely, and I changed into flannel pajamas and poured us both a glass of whisky, and all lived happily ever after.