Nooshi, 19th Street NW

Nooshi, Nooshi, Nooshi. Does your mother know how bad you’ve been?

I’ve eaten from Nooshi takeout before, during lunchtime. Their pad thai is fair-to-middling and their peking duck is overcooked. I’d never before eaten at Nooshi’s sit-down side before though, and on this night, we ended up there very much by chance.

First of all, I am stupid. Thursday all afternoon, I kept telling myself to write down the address of the Breakfast I would be going to in the morning and kept reminding myself to put it in my purse. I forgot. I did not realize until I returned home and Monkey and I were debating eatings. So, that kind of steered us for the night. As he walked me back to work, I thought that perhaps it would be a better idea to try and eat downtown-ish instead of heading up to Dupont or Adams Morgan or back to Chinatown. Besides, we had tried a pan-asian place on 19^th street when we first moved here, and perhaps we should give it another try?

Address secured, we made out way on to 19^th Street, but as we approached the little stint of restaurants around the corner (italian, thai, sushi, quiznos, etc.) they looked to be filled with a great many drunken students. Nooshi, on the other hand, just two storefronts down, looked dead and warm so we gave it a try. Originally, I had the intent of getting something hot and maybe stirfried, but was oh-so-tempted by the Unagi chirashi. Unagi is seriously among my favorite things about Japan. Because Nooshi is semi-pan-asian, it also offered a lot of thai and Vietnamese fare, among them the Tom Kha soup, an Ophelia-and-Monkey* favorite. Also, we wanted to drink because, well, it had turned freakin’ cold that night.

Monkey got a sashimi spread and some girl drink plum wine, I got the unagi and warm sake, and we split the Tom Kha.

1) Tom Kha is tasteless. Okay, not tasteless, but not nearly sour enough, not nearly spicy enough, and not nearly coconut milky enough. In short, not tom kha.

2) Monkey was unimpressed with his sashimi, though he did admit that the serving was more than he expected and the price was right.

3) Unagi should have been bigger. I was very pleased with the sticky rice though; it wasn’t spectacular, but I like mine with a lot of rice wine vinegar. I could smell the rwv when we walked in, so I was hoping for some nice sweet and tangy rice, and that’s what I got.

4) Monkey’s drink. I don’t remember this, but I know my sake was better. How do I know? It was cold. I took one sip and told him, “oh no, this is what you want.” The warm goes down so nice.

Prices: monkeys was somewhere between 9$ and 12$, mine was 10$. I don’t remember tom kha, but drinks were 7$-8$ and a jar of sake is 3.50$.** Service was overwhelming and good, but I suspect that was because they were dead.

Final ruling: it’s fair and cheap, and we’ll be going back on those nights when I work late and we meet out for dinner, but we're not rushing back.

---

*Ophelia-and-Monkey doesn’t have the ring I’d like. Because of our penchant for savantness in our respective fields, we had considered becoming “Frank and Ollie.” I’d be Frank. But I mentioned to Monkey that this seemed familiar for some reason, and I realized that Frank and Ollie are two old men who are rather well known for being Frank and Ollie.

**In case you are wondering why I am usually able to give some info on pricing, it’s because I am Monkey’s SugarMama.