Girl Meets Food

DC Summer Restaurant Week is from Monday, August 16, to Sunday, August 22, offering a three-course lunch for $20.10, and a three-course dinner at $35.10 per person.

But you don’t have to wait.  Here are some restaurants offering prix fixe menus before, during or after DC Summer Restaurant Week.  Check back for updates and additions!

The Fourth Estate Restaurant serves stylish American food in the historic National Press Club, using locally grown produce and meats for a menu that elevates taste above trendiness. They will be extending the special Restaurant Week menu an extra week, from August 23-29, 2010.  They also have a three-course prix pixe menu for $30 per person Thursday through Saturday. The Fourth Estate Restaurant, 529 14th St NW, 13th Floor.  202.662.7638

Nage Bistro will offer its special Restaurant Week menu throughout the entire month of August.  Start with a wild mushroom Baklava with pecans, blueberry compote, thyme, and goat cheese foam.  A choice of entrées includes grilled swordfish with seasoned bread crumbs, watermelon, and fennel; and Cajun meatloaf with rapini, potatoes, sundried tomatoes, and rosemary jus.  Nage Bistro, 1600 Rhode Island Avenue, NW.  202.448.8005.

In addition to offering a three-course Restaurant Week menu of innovative Japanese charcoal-grilled meats, fish and vegetables, Kushi Izakaya & Sushi will offer an expertly crafted sake pairing featuring three varieties of sake for $20.  The sake pairing is available during lunch and dinner throughout Restaurant Week.  Kushi Izakaya & Sushi, 465 K Street, NW.  202.682.3123

Restaurant 3 will extend their Restaurant Week menu for an extra week, from August 23-29, 2010, with a menu of comfort food full of soulful Southern flavor.  Restaurant 3, 2950 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington, VA.  703-524-4440.

Café Saint-Ex will offer an indulgent three-course Restaurant Week menu during lunch only which will extend for an extra week, from August 23-29, 2010.  Cafe Saint-Ex serves up American Bistro style cuisine that comfort, while prepared with the finest quality ingredients.  Café Saint-Ex, 1847 14th Street NW. 202.265.7839

Rasika has a three-course prix fixe menu that start with tikka kaliya, seekh kebabs, clam caldine or sev puri; entrées such as chicken makhani, lamb roganjosh and tandoori salmon; and gulab jamun for dessert.  $30 per person Monday to Friday from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Saturday from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. 633 D Street, NW, with validated valet parking for $7.  202.637.1222

The Oval Room’s three-course prix fixe menu that showcases appetizers such as roasted baby beets with walnuts and goat cheese; and crudo of rockfish with sweet chili, mango and cilantro. Featured entrées include shellfish broth and herb oil; and roasted beef striploin with Swiss chard. Dessert options include almond brown butter cake; or chocolate-red beet cake with and pistachio ice cream. $35 per person from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. nightly. The Oval Room, 800 Connecticut Avenue, NW.  202.463.8700.

Bibiana Osteria-Enoteca’s three-course pre-fixe menu starts with tonno with salad confit yellow fin tuna; or zuppa with chilled fennel soup. Entrée options are paccheri with large rigatoni with raisins, pine nuts and pecorino; and sheep’s milk ricotta ravioli with lemon and spinach. For the sweet, try panna cotta with a liquid black cherry bottom; tiramisu; and crema pasticcera with fried Nutella pastry cream. $30 per person from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Bibiana Osteria-Enoteca, 1100 New York Ave. NW.  (202) 216-9550.

701 Restaurant’s three-course pre-theater menu features grilled pineapple salad with jalapeño, hearts of palm and lime. Entrées such as roasted cod with lentils, haricot verts, and ver jus emulsion; petite prime New York steak; and goat cheese cavatelli with artichokes and oyster mushrooms. For dessert, try fresh berries with orange compari sorbet; or strawberry gelée with frozen yogurt.  $30 per person from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 5:00 to 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. 701 Restaurant, 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.  202.393.0701.

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Pork. It’s what’s for dinner.  Pork belly, pork roasts, pork skins, pork sandwiches, pork rinds, pork everything.

And bacon.

Pork is everywhere you turn, and it’s hip to be swine.

Pig roasts were once reserved only for special occasions in many cultures, like births and weddings.  Now they are synonymous with summer barbeques.

Dolcezza’s grand opening party on May 9th included a 250-pound pig roast from Eco-Friendly Foods.

Cochon 555 was the porker of all events on May 2nd, with five 140-pound pigs, prepared by five chefs.  This Pork Prom saw creations like pork jowl stew, pork “bombs,” pork jerky, lardo, ham jam, pork lollipops and bacon ice cream.

If you missed that, 3 Bar & Grill will host a similar soirée May 30th, with a 250-pound-plus pig roast, with hot, smoky pulled pork sandwiches.  Tenpenh hosts a Filipino-style lechon pig roast every Sunday on their patio, complete with a full bar. Poste’s hickory-smoked roasts occur six days a week in the garden, served with fresh, seasonal sides.

Art and Soul has elevated pork rinds into an art form, with its curly, silky ribbons of deep-fried pork skin sprinkled with Old Bay.

Trummer’s on Main has the most mouth-watering, tender vanilla pork belly, while Kushi cooks its Buta Bara pork belly sous vide, then grills it.  Tastes like smoky pork butter.  Mmm.

Eola will host an evening of “snout to tail” indulgence along with wine on May 27th, with more than 20 innovative dishes crafted from every part of the pig, and I do mean every…part.

With so much pork in the city, you can never get “boar-ed.”

Kushi's Virginia oyster.

At the opening party for Kushi in Mt. Vernon Square, the drinks were a-flowin’ and the food was a-plentiful.

Izakaya, a Japanese word consisting of i, to sit, and sakaya, sake shop, is a drinking establishment that serves bar snacks, popular in Japan and Korea.

Think of it as a pub.

Kushi calls itself an izakaya and sushi restaurant, and has plenty of room to combine the two.  Its airy, 4,000-square-foot industrial space is softened with the long, bamboo kushiyaki counter surrounding a robata fire pit, a separate sushi counter, a raw bar with an ever-changing selection, and a fully-stocked bar with sake, beer and shochu.

The menu features fresh fish flown straight from Tokyo as well as local, sustainable fish and meats. There’s sushi, grilled meats and vegetables on skewers, soups, and other small dishes like potato salad and onigiri rice balls.

The raw bar.

I sampled an abundance of delicious morsels, too many to mention here.  The highlights?

Large, hearty Cherrystone clams with wasabi-mayo which were fresh, sweet and crunchy.

The spicy tuna roll was silky, fresh, with a subtle kick.  This is quality tuna, not that dull, lifeless stuff you find around D.C.

The Heritage Breed chicken thighs were grilled with a light teriyaki sauce—blackened yet tender.

I absolutely loved the briny oysters from Rhode Island, which were fantastic even without sauce.  I was also impressed with the miso-marinated octopus on a bed of seaweed.  Usually I avoid octopus for its rubbery texture, but this was so fresh and firm, I didn’t have to chew on it from here ’til Sunday.

The salmon sashimi was creamy and smooth, the standard fare, and the Heritage Breed chicken meatballs were glistening little globes of minced meat.

The Berkshire pork belly was a culinary knockout—cooked sous-vide at low temperatures for twelve hours before being grilled for that buttery, melt-in-your-mouth silkiness.

The bar features four Japanese beers on draft and eight more Japanese and non-Japanese brands.  Also, over sixty kinds of hot and cold sake include filtered and unfiltered sake, and small batch labels by the glass or bottle.

And of course, what’s an izakaya without a selection of shochu?  Shochu is a distilled beverage similar to Korean soju, which is weaker than vodka but stronger than sake.  Goes down smooth, and gets you buzzed.

Those bar snacks are going to come in handy.

Kushi
465 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 682-3123