ariake

motivation: dinner with sensational r and her new french boyfriend l, to thank pinky for help getting her gorgeous house sold before the market crash. ariake is one of r's favorite richmond sushi restaurants, and the owners know her. she'll walk in, ask chef jin for a whatever he recommends, and never be disappointed. which is a pretty good way to go. we let jin and r do most of the choosing and l seduce us with a beaune 1er cru, le clos de mouches. that's the bottle of wine he brought in. it worked.

quality: the sushi here is exceptional. enormous pieces of escolar, blue fin tuna, hon zake, shima aji, hamachi. tender. perfectly prepared. ideal temperature. bottomless ginger. the menu has dinner combinations called "faith", "hope", "love", and "ariake", but we never even looked at it. we ate sashimi and sushi all night and found not one thing to complain about.

the prices are right for the quality, though we lucked out by letting r take control--she paid for dinner.

flirtability was high at the bar and i forgot to look around the rest of the place much. might have been the wine. probably was my love affair with the fish.

by the end of the evening, my belly was blissful. when you go, drop me some comments and tell everyone else how good it was.

itadakimasu!