5-Course Dinner Fail: Or, Why I Don't Get Out Much

Updates: Lane informs me (and he is right!) that risotto has to be made with rice. For almost half a century, I have mistakenly believed you could make it with rice or with that rice-shaped pasta, risoni (or orzo), and it was still risotto. The big pile of meh that came to me (see Course 5 below) I thought was somewhat dried out pasta and cheese and peas. But it seems from both the menu and close examination of the picture, that it was somewhat dried out rice and cheese and peas. So, I could not have had a gluten response to it, and the stomach pains must have simply been because it wasn't any good, not because of any nutritional response. Interesting, but not making me any more inclined to try it again!

Went last night to an organized dinner at a well-recognized restaurant/bar in the Adams Morgan section of Washington. I'm not going to name the restaurant, because it's not my nature to dis something on one pass. If anyone is that interested, send an email.

But I am going to rant.

The meal was supposed to be Japanese-themed, although the restaurant in question offers a broad (too broad?) variety of cuisines. Dinner "course" one, shown in the first picture and served at about 7:10, was a bit of pureed avocado and a tiny sliver of salmon, wrapped in paper-thin slices of avocado and served on a rice cracker. I thought it was a bit of a stretch to call this small appetizer a course, but it was good, a nice blend of textures and just the right amount of salt on the rice cracker to set off the sweetness of the avocado.

Course 2 was another appetizer - this time a single scallop, sliced crosswise into thirds, with each round topped with a Mexican-style salsa. The presentation was pretty, but the scallop sections were too thin to hold up the salsa, which was fairly bland and accented by what tasted for all the world like anchovy paste.

Course 3 - yet another appetizer, and another single piece of seafood - a tempura shrimp - cut into thirds. In this case each piece of the portioned shrimp had been made into rice sushi. The rice was flat and tasted like it had sat for quite a while - little better than warmed-over supermarket sushi.

Course 4 and (somewhat astonishingly) another appetizer, with more seafood - three thin slices of yellowtail (I think) with slivers of jalapeno in a piquant, slightly citrus fish sauce. The balance of fish and sauce actually was quite good, and if this had been my first, or maybe even my second, appetizer I would have been pleased.

If this were a tapas bar I'd have been expecting this type of serving and serving size, but I was expecting a more traditional dining experience and I hadn't eaten before coming to dinner. By now it was past 8:30 and I was excruciatingly hungry. And so they came with the final dinner course, an now-much-larger portion of somewhat dry risotto with cheese and a few peas. Essentially, a big pile of meh.

I was starving and so I sucked it down, knowing I'd pay the price of eating something so carb-heavy on an essentially empty stomach. I forgot, though, about the gluten. I haven't eaten this much gluten at one sitting in more than a year. About 20 minutes after the risotto course the dessert came, and so did the stomach cramps.

Not such a bad thing, because dessert also was traditional American comfort food - a large individual chocolate brownie cake with chocolate sauce over and raspberry sauce surrounding it. The raspberry sauce I liked, as it was intense and not too terribly sweet. The cake was perfectly acceptable but had nothing at all special going on - it could have come straight from a mix. I didn't really want more than a forkful by then anyway, though, so it's just as well that it wasn't compelling.

And that was dinner at a fairly tony restaurant in a reasonably restaurant-laden section of town. The next night, I stayed home.