Left Bank, Washington, D.C.

It's the first part of the month again, so it was time for the second "1stuesday" promotion in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood, where we get dinner for two for only $25.00. We had such a good time last month, we headed up again to explore other new restaurants.

The place we'd wanted to go, Perry's, was closed for a private party. Alas. So, we walked on down to 18th Street and entered Left Bank, an ecclectic American bistro with a sushi bar (an odd combination that seems to be popular in Adams-Morgan).

There was hardly anyone there. Our waitress sneaked in the door right behind us. There were only a few people at the bar, and once we were seated, we were the only table in the dining room. By the time we left, they had three more tables filed and several more at the bar, but the place was far from busy.

The dining room is a great, big, open, emotionally sterile room decorated in the new "trendy" taupe look seen in some D.C. restaurants and clubs. A very large bar sits in the center of the room, and in the very back by the restrooms is a small sushi preparation bar. Along the sides of the walls are these enormous three-top booths at tables so large, intimate conversation was impossible, and I felt during the meal that my dinner companion was at the far end of a long table. In the spaces between the booths and the bar were little skinny two-top tables that were so small, I don't see how they'd squeeze in two dinner plates and two cocktails.

The menu was very impressive, with a lot of nice looking entrees in the $20-something range. They also had a substantial cocktail and mixed drink list. Tuesdays are "Smirnoff Night," so any drink made with Smirnoff vodkas is only $5. The 1stuesday menu, though, was disappointingly very limited: one order of the sushi and sushi roll combination plate (an entree for one) and two tastes of different cold sakes (one clear, one unfiltered) for each diner. Period. No substititions. No accommodations for non-drinkers. No "regular" food options that weren't sushi. Last month we went to a Japanese restaurant where we were expecting sushi, that place gave each of us a bowl of miso soup and a scoop of green tea ice cream in addition to our sushi and sake, but that was not the case at Left Bank. And, Tuesday night was the first noticeably cold night of the fall, and cold sake wasn't exactly what I wanted, but they weren't substituting hot sake for the cold (it isn't a matter of just heating the cold sake; different types of sake are meant to be served one way or the other, and they aren't versatile).

Well, we knew we weren't going to get full on half a plate of sushi each, so we opted to start with bloody Marys (Smirnoff Night, remember?) and an order of their hummus guacamole. I noticed that our waitress brought the bloodies and the sakes all at the same time, instead of saving the sake for the sushi. The hummus was different. It came in an oversized bowl with deep, lopsided edges, with a mound of the hummus in the bottom of the bowl and half a dozen slices of lightly toasted bread on the sides of the bowl (sorry about the picture, I forget to photograph it until we'd already eaten some of it). I think I was expecting more guacamole taste and green color; what we got was chickpea tan and tasted like a fairly bland hummus with little chunks of not terribly ripe avocado.

I also forgot to take a picture of the sushi plate, but, hey, how many times can you look at a picture of a routine plate of sushi? Now, the sushi nigiri (the slice of raw fish on a piece of rice) we got tasted very good and seemed nicely fresh. The sushi rolls, though, supposedly had three different varieties, but they all tasted boringly alike, save for one that tasted like the others but with some hot spice. We each got four pieces of sushi nigiri and six pieces of sushi roll, which I consider an appetizer, not a meal. When the waitress brought the sushi, she had to be reminded to bring the chopsticks, soy sauce, and the little dish for mixing the wasabi.

Once we finished eating, we just kind of looked at one another. We looked at the dessert menu, but nothing was inspiring. The emphasis at this restaurant is definitely on the liquor sales, not the food, and I had the impression from the waitress and all of the staff that they really couldn't care less if we were there or not. So, we decided to leave and move on to another establishment where we could get the taste of Left Bank out of our mouths.