Black Salt -- DC

We went to the Black Salt Restaurant last night for dinner -- the first time we'd been there in more than a year. We had such a good time, we wonder why we don't go more often -- though it is geographically undesirable, located over in the MacArthur Park area of town [all the way across the town from our Capitol Hill house].

Black Salt has a fish market in the front of the restaurant that gives the place a nice local feel. People from the neighborhood by the fresh fish there. Even better, the whole place has a nice ambiance -- not overly pretentious and a friendly staff. [Paul even met one of his rugby buddies there who was tending bar].

We had a great meal. We had fish of course, since it is a fish market! In fact, the restaurant provides a list of daily fresh fish that are available for grilling or baked. Last night they had everything from tuna to tilefish.

Katy started with a sashimi appetizer platter (one of the daily specials) that had hamachi, scallps and some strange Japanese fish whose name we forget. It was served with a sea urchin vinagrette that served as the dipping sauce. Quite lovely. Paul had the gazpacho -- a cold soup served, in this case, with lump crabmeat and a whole tomato in the center.

For our main courses, Katy ordered off of the daily specials and got a roasted rockfish with a suprisingly spicy panag curry sauce and great fresh vegatables. Paul was even more adventerous -- he said "let the chef choose whatever he wants to do." He wound up getting a grilled mangrove snapper [we were told that is the rarest snapper around] covered in a dijon cream sauce layered on top of fresh sweet corn, more crabmeat, cooked tomatoes and peas. The sweetness of the corn was perfectly matched with the crab meat and the dijon sauce and the fish was cooked to perfection.

We accompanied the meal with a 1/2 bottle of 2005 Muga Riserva Roja wine from Spain. The wine was a good full bodied red, that was perfect with the appetizers, but it clashed with the main courses -- especially Katy's spicy rockfish. In retrospect we should have gone for a Pinot Noir or a white wine of some sort.

Of course, the best course of the night was dessert! Katy had a wonderful Dark chocolate flourless cake with raspberries and coconut sorbet (with real coconut grated in it). Paul had something called Butterscotch creme which was a utterly sinful concoction of scotch, vanilla, cream, almond crackle and two shortbread cookies. It was so sweet that he didn't finish it, if you can believe that!

We don't know why we don't go here more often ... but we are going to fix that in the future.