Anniversary

Last week, Sunshine and I finally managed to eat at the remarkable Kaz Sushi Bistro.* We'd tried to get in a week before and been turned away for lack of reservations. After Monday's wonderful meal, we decided then and there on our big anniversary plans: to get dolled-up tonight and spend an exorbitant amount at this very restaurant. Last Monday, reeling from our excellent meal, we made reservations for tonight on the spot. We drove the half-mile to the metro because of our fancy shoes, so we arrived at the Farragut West Station, one block from the bistro, with forty minutes to kill. We can't walk past the corner of I Street and 19th without having a mojto in Karma Bar, anyway. At ten till eight, we were seated at Kaz, and for the next two hours we ate one of the best meals I've ever seen. I ordered all the same things I got last week, minus eel rolls. I also ordered: wild mushroom miso, seaweed salad with ginger dressing, huge soft-shell crabs templed over diced oshinko with ponzu, and a sixteen-piece chef's selection of sashimi including thick fatty toro and seared albacore chunks beside the usual: tuna, salmon, clam, whitefish, and yellowtail.* I also ate one of Sunshine's tuna-with-truffle rolls, a few of her toasted baby octopuses (traditionally barbecued, but charred at the tips of their tentacles rendering them both crunchy and soft), and some of her salmon carpaccio--a Japanese simplification of the thinly-sliced caper/tomato/oil-marinated Italian appetizer. For dessert, I had green tea tiramisu, and Sunshine had a special Cherry Blossom Festival concoction of fine plum and green tea ice creams with a cherry wafer. Leaving, I felt stuffed but not bloated, and we only exceeded our insane special-occasion budget by seven bucks. Happy anniversary. [Cavin]