Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Pesce

We were wandering around Dupont Circle last weekend and came across Pesce, a gem of a fish restaurant! The interior is a little bright and austere, but the food showed much more taste.

When you sit down they bring you a chalkboard menu tableside...this was a good omen because it brought us back to a similar restaurant experience in Paris, and that was a fantastically good meal!

We started with the grilled calamari with squid ink, which was cooked with just the right amount of char, and was tender and very flavorful. It's hard to find calamari not fried until unrecognizable, so this was a pleasant treat! For my entree I combined the garden salad and Pesce trio apps. The salad felt like an afterthought, and I didn't even finish it. The trio, though, was so good--portions of chunky, oniony guacamole, tuna tartare dressed with only the tiniest bit too much soy and topped with what I swear were shards of Pringles, and an eggplant dip that was heavy on the tahini (in a good way) and honestly tasted more like hummus than baba ghanouj. P couldn't get enough of the eggplant, and I have to agree that it was delicious. Creamy, garlicky, almost unctuous. P got the corvina with pureed potatoes and a gumbo sauce. The fish was cooked well and the dish overall had really bold but nice, complementary flavors.

The portions were pretty sizable, so we were stuffed after dinner and for the rest of the night. My only hope is that we managed to burn at least a couple of those calories mawing the really, REALLY chewy bread that accompanied our meal...(x-posted to yelp.com)

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