Trip to Washington D.C….Cultural experiences and Dinner at PROOF

The second day of this trip was the only full day to spend in DC.

Since it was my first time to visit the capital city, Motoko took me on an afternoon bus tour! Her friend, Misa, also joined our afternoon activities. It was so nice of them (who are the locals) to do such a touristy thing with me!

We had such a fun time. I totally enjoyed being a tourist.

We were going to see a play in the evening, so we had a pre-theater dinner at a local wine bar. It was a place called, "PROOF", which is popular among locals. They had a nice wine selection, and I was also quite impressed by the food there. Their house-made assorted pate and crispy sweetbread were especially good.

I was nicely tipsy after the dinner and was so looking forward to see the play which Motoko booked us seats for. The venue was a historic Lincoln Theater, which was originally built in 1922, and has been a center for African American culture. The play we saw was called Loving Him is Killing Me. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. The cast was all African American, and the audience was also 100% African American except for us!! They were all dressed up so nicely. They must have thought why those two small Asian girls (us!) were in the crowd. Or, they probably thought we came to see Tyson Beckford...well, he was indeed super hot! (Sorry, Jason.)

Right next door to Lincoln Theater was DC's another iconic place; Ben's Chili Bowl. It was already around 11pm but the place was so packed! I was really interested in trying their famous chili dog, but I was still too full from the dinner. They looked so huge! We just picked up a few dogs to take home for Motoko's husband. I want to try it next time!

Trip to Washington D.C….Dinner at Corduroy

I came to Washington D.C. on a weekend 3-day trip last a couple of weeks ago. Motoko, who used to be a colleague of mine at Toshiba-EMI and now lives in D.C., came to meet me at the airport. It was so great to see her again!


From the airport, we took Metro to the city central. We had a tea break at a local café. Very cute place.


For dinner, we had a reservation at a place called, Corduroy. This restaurant is inside of a small in (very old building) in a seemingly very unlikely area for a stylish shop or eatery. But once we walked inside of the building, it was beautifully modern and had the very warm ambience. Really nice looking place!

We met up with two girlfriends of Motoko’s and four of us had a really fun dinner together. We learned from our waiter that the executive chef of Corduroy has a Japanese wife and he has visited Japan for culinary research before. So, the menu reflects his such background. I saw some Japanese ingredients and preparations in the descriptions.


Noriko’s Shiso Salad. I ordered it because I was so intrigued by the name of the dish. Noriko is the name of chef’s wife. The dish brought in front of me was not exactly what I expected. It was a rather rustic presentation of basically cabbage salad with a little amount of shiso and wakame seaweed. Very homey dish and the flavor was also homey and good. It went well with 2008 Hermann J. Wiemer, Dry Riesling (Finger Lakes, New York). One of the friends ordered gobo (burdock) soup, which had more modern “restaurant” presentation. It had a nice creamy flavor.


My main course was Broken Arrow Ranch Antelope with Chestnut Puree. It was served medium-rare. The meat is from Texas. The meat was really good and had a nice juicy flavor. It was almost as lean as buffalo. I enjoyed the dish very much.


The desserts shined! We ordered 4 kinds and shared them. There were tart tatin, pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate tart, and bread pudding. I normally don’t eat big amount of dessert, but this time I kept going! Very nice ending.

Trip to Washington D.C.

I've been too busy past days to update my blog.

Just returned from DC a couple of days ago, and now I'm going back to Japan today!

DC was a lot of fun...I will post pictures from the trip after I get to Tokyo.