Kitchen Wench

For my birthday, Lee took me to Makoto, a tiny Japanese restuarant reputed to be one of the best in DC. All I can say is, I never thought I’d love raw fish so much.

Makoto has seating for all of twenty people, crammed into a long, narrow room. Reservations with your credit card are required (trust me, it’s worth it). There is seating either at the counter or at a table, neither of which is particularly comfortable or more desireable, as there is hardly space to delineate each seating area. The restaurant is warm, bright in light colored woods and neutral walls. When we arrived (late, as Makoto is located in the western reaches of Georgetown), a kimono-clad waitress instructed us to take off our shoes and put on a pair of slippers. The slippers were, for some reason, only available in mens sizes and look like something my grandfather would wear. After this, we were escorted to a small wooden table. “Put coat and shoes in seat!” the waitress barked, and she lifted the seat of the chair to reveal a storage compartment underneath. While this was clever, these were perhaps the most uncomfortable stools I have ever had the displeasure of sitting on for an hour and a half.

However, the stools were the only downside of my dining experience. Makoto serves a strict fixed price menu, plus sushi ala carte and a wide selection of sake. The dinner menu changes daily, allows minimal substitutions, and is $49 for an eight to ten course meal. This is really reasonable for fabulous Japanese food, the sophistocation and quality of which is probably only available at a handful of US restaurants. If you’re looking for a meal that has been elevated to an art, in flavor and presentation, Makoto is perfect. If you come to a Japanese restaurant expecting your usual California roll and tempura, then please, take your money elsewhere. Now, for a brief description of my nine blissful courses: Read the rest of this entry �

I’m not someone who often gets mistaken for another person. In fact, I think I can count on one hand the number of times someone has told me I looked like or mistaken me for someone else. So, it was rather upsetting to find out that I have a doppelganger: Kitchen Wench at The Tudor Shoppe.

Just kidding. About the wench costume anyway; mustard yellow is so not my color. But not about the doppelganger. In the big, bad, blogosphere, there is a another Kitchen Wench. And she clearly has a better digital camera than me. More disturbing still is that she is also Asian and her name also starts with a vowel.

Okay, the vowel thing really isn’t weird, but the other similarities are a little troubling. As I see it, there are still a few things left to redeem me.

1. She lives in Australia. Australia is far away. I am perfectly content letting someone else be the official kitchen wench of Australia.
2. I have the .com extension (which I waited a full year to to purchase because some lady was using it to park her defunct catering start-up).
3. It’s hard to photograph food when you live in a basement apartment.
4. My basement apartment is awesome.
5. If Slim Shady can do it, so can I.
6. And, most importantly, this girl probably doesn’t know I even exist.