Sushi Taro, Washington, D.C.

Thursday evening my friend Kody finally succeeded in dragging me over to see his new apartment in the east Dupont Circle area. Afterwards, we caught a break in the rain and walked over to Sushi Taro, where Kody took me for dinner. He'd never been there before, and, since I knew he liked sushi, I'd told him he had one of the best sushi bars in town right there in his neighborhood.

It was, as always, crowded and bustling. They had a big party group in the Japanese seating area, where all the low tables (for sitting on the floor) had been pushed together for one long surface. In the main dining area, there were only two tables empty right then, one a four top-and one two two-tops pushed together, which the staff separated giving us one and soon thereafter seating a couple of guys at the other table. Not long after we arrived, the sushi bar itself also filled up to capacity.

Once we were seated, we seem to have been forgotten for a little while, abandoned with no water and with just one menu between the two of us. I was a little worried by this inauspicious beginning, especially since the little table just eight inches away from ours with the two newly-arrived guys had menus, a la carte sushi information, water, and a waitress, but once our (different) waitress "discovered" us, the service was attentive and excellent the rest of the evening.



Naturally, we began with a bottle of sake. We selected a bottle of Shochikubai Nigori sake, an excellent unfiltered, milky-white sake served cold which, unbeknownst to me when we ordered, is actually a wine made in northern California rather than in Asia. I really liked it a lot and Kody thought he detected hints of coconut in the slightly-sweet wine. It was nice before dinner and it went particularly well with the food.

To start the meal, we each received little bowls of miso soup, a traditional Japanese clear soup made with fermented soybeans, a few small cubes of tofu and a little bit of seaweed. There version was clean and delicate.



As a first course, we also ordered some ika ring age, the Japanese version of Italian calimari or rings of squid breaded and deep-fried, but our Japanese wasn't good enough for a loud, noisy restaurant, and we ended up with the ika yaki, a dish I think ended up being superior to what we ordered. They cut the tentacles off the squid and grilled them, glazing them along the way with a ginger soy sauce. They had a wonderful grilled flavor and we enjoyed them quite a bit. There was quite a large serving, too, and I think there were a couple of tentacles left over (we didn't want to fill up on squid before dinner!).



For a main course, Kody ordered the sushi combination platter, and he got a beautiful (and quickly made!) platter of seven different large sushi nigiri and a large tuna roll cut into half a dozen pieces. It looked delicious and the price (at $16.50) was very reasonable, too. The accompanying gari (pickled, sliced ginger root) was very fresh, too, as evidenced by the yellow rather than pink color. I discovered, though, that while Kody had frequented the social sushi bars back in Tulsa, he'd never really had sushi nigiri; he went to those Americanized places where they specialized in those bizarre roll combinations, and that's what he was used to eating. I hope he enjoyed the "Japanese" style of sushi, instead of the American kind.



I ordered a sushi and sashimi bento box, and when it arrived, it was absolutely beautiful! I had about half as much sushi as Kody had gotten, plus I got three pieces each of salmon, tuna, and bonito sashimi (for those of you not familiar with sushi bars, sashimi is basically sushi without the rice). In addition, I had some shrimp and vegetable tempura that was crisp and light, a couple of gyoza fried dumplings, a brown seaweed, several Japanese vegetable salt-pickles, and a mound of finely shredded daikon white radish. Everything was excellent. As always, I marvel over the quality of their sushi and sashimi—I've been to many significantly more expensive places and Sushi Taro's food could stand up to any of them.



Kody decided that we should drink dessert. We started with a saketini, in essence a gin martini made with sake instead of vermouth and garnished with a big wedge of lemon instead of an olive. Since I'm a fan of martinis containing only a few molecules of vermouth, this drink wasn't really to my taste, and I thought the fermented sake lended a slightly sour taste to the martini.



We made up for it on the next go-round, though, with having a shochu cocktail (I forget the cutesie name they called it) that resembled a cosmopolitan with shochu instead of vodka and lemon instead of orange all colored with red cranberry juice. Shochu is an intriguing 50-proof liquor that is starting to become popular on the East Coast and already they say that in Japan, shochu is more popular than sake. What's interesting is that it's a distilled liquor made from rice, barley, and sweet potatoes, and the Japanese market it as a no-calorie alcohol! While Kody drank his shochu, I had a very nice glass of cold Kinsen plum wine.



Our quick snack before had to go home and study ended up being a three hour dining experience!