Ceviche

A few years ago, I went to Jaleo for the first time. In fact, it was on my birthday. A friend and I were wandering around Bethesda, looking for a place to eat. One place seemed closed. Another, too expensive. Then, we went to Jaleo, and the prices looked way cheap.

Once we sat down and had tapas explained to us, we found out why it was so cheap. Tapas is, for lack of a better word, Spanish dim sum. For those of you who've never had dim sum, this is basically Chinese appetizers. Restaurants specializing in dim sum usually do it on the weekends, from about 11 AM to 3 PM. If the size of the restaurant permits, they bring carts filled with appetizers.

Typical dim sum include dumplings of all sorts, beef, chicken, shrimp. They have fried rice, some veggies, battered balls, taro cakes. Occasionally, there are a few exotic items. Chicken's feet (which is basically chicken skin over very tiny bones) and possibly even congealed blood, for the really brave.

You point to what you want, or ask, if you don't know what you have, and the wait staff puts a mark on a card, indicating what you've ordered. Each appetizer is usually suitable for about 3, maybe 4, to get a small bite. A dim sum meal consists of eating maybe 4-5 samples, if you want something light, or upwards of 6-8, if you're really famished.

For a brunch, dim sum can be a bit heavy. Like much of Chinese cuisine, dumplings are known to be greasy, and so you have to deal with greasy food.

Tapas, in general, is not nearly this bold. Tapas, at least at Jaleo, splits into three categories, based on temperature. Modeled after a clothes washer, the temperatures are split into hot, warm, and cold. Unlike dim sum, there are no carts. You order with the waiter, and they deliver.

Since I've only had tapas maybe half a dozen times, I can't recall what items usually come with tapas. There's, I'm sure, some meat offerings, some fish, various veggie things. Overall, it's less greasy than dim sum.

Last night, I tried a place called Ceviche. Now, apparently, this is a Peruvian dish, and can best be summarized as "Peruvian sushi". You take raw fish, then mix it with, say, lime and cilantro. The acid tends to make the fish looked cooked, but it's raw.

Dave and I split the ceviche. We also both had mixed drinks. Dave had a daiquiri, in the style of Hemingway, which Dave said tasted like grapefruit juice. I had caipirinha, a Brazilian drink, made from lime, cachaça, and sugar. It's basically a Brazilian mojito.

Here's a description I found for cachaça.

Cachaça is Brazilian liquor made from distilled sugar cane juice. While rum is distilled from molasses, cachaca is distilled directly from the juice of the unrefined sugar cane. Before distillation, the juice ferments in a wood or copper container for three weeks, and is then boiled down three times to a concentrate. Cachaca is always distilled in such a way that the scent of sugar cane and inimitable flavor typical of rum are retained.

I've noticed that restaurants that sell mixed drinks usually have less alcohol than if you were getting it at a bar. At least, I think so. I did have a magarita at some restaurant, and they gave me something like 12-14 ounces worth. That was a lot of alcohol.

I also ate some kind of dish made with some cheese sauce, potatoes, tomatoes, avocadoes, and a soft-boiled egg on top. This was decent, but I was hoping for something a bit spicy.

Dave said that the place, despite being named after a Peruvian dish, is more of a Cuban place. It tries to look trendy, though Dave felt it looked like a chain, sort of a Latin American Tara Thai (Tara Thai is a chain Thai restaurant, as you might imagine). No idea whether that's true or not. Dave said Cuban food is generally not spicy.

Anyway, with the mixed drinks, and each of us having a modestly expensive dish, and splitting the ceviche, it all added up to a pretty penny, which I treated, since I'm the one making the money. I jokingly remarked to Dave that I expected him to put out. I wonder if that term is even used much any more. Make me feel old to use it!

Next time, I think, we'll try the Thai restaurant next door (I saw two former students at the Vietnamese restaurant, that really is next door--the Thai restaurant is really two doors down), which should be a lot cheaper than Ceviche.

I'd recommend trying Ceviche once, but the prices, and the general "it's all right" feeling I got, means I probably won't head back, except to get just the ceviche itself. One plus---the portions were tiny. I think restaurants should do that more often.

One minus. I decided to get more food. I went to the local Jamaican carry out. Oh, is this place ever slow. I decided to be brave and order the soup, which is called "Mannish Water". I'm sorry, but this has to be the least appealing name for a soup ever. I'm guessing that there is some sense that it is a masculine kind of soup, by I tend to think thoughts like rancid sweat. Not appetizing.

This time, they explained what it was. In parentheses below, it said "Goat Head's Soup". Also, not so appetizing. I still ended up buying it. It tasted a bit strange. There are some goat meat that had fatty parts. I have no idea if that was really part of the head. There was some kind of dumpling, and some kind of veggie like thing that looked like bamboo, but who's insides tasted a bit starchy like potatoes.

I had half of the soup, before putting it away.

Then, after that, I went to a party at Yancy's, who, I was told, lives nearby. By nearby, I thought this meant may 5 minutes away, walking. But it was more like a mile, walking. And it was cold. And I was carrying beer. And when I got there it was really crowded.

At these kinds of parties, one ends up talking to people that one knows. I talked to Arkady, a guy I occasionally play tennis with. He used to room with Justin, which is how I knew him, before both moved out to separate places. Arkady was there with two of his housemates.

The centerpiece of the party was something called the "Jesus Luge", if I understood what was being said. This was a frozen sculpture of Jesus on the cross. Well, it's more like Jesus as if He were a stuffed puppet, and an ice sculptor depicted this puppet. There's no sense in trying to capture the emaciated Jesus, so often seen in paintings.

This was meant to be some kind of blasphemous humor, which is fine by me, as I'm not the religious sort. Most people deemed it as uber-cool. I just wondered where one even finds such ice sculptors, and the logistics of bringing it back.

They must have invited some 40 people or more, and it was really crowded. I had the misfortune of standing in front of a side door, and was forced to constantly dance near that door as people attempted to go in and out. I know. I shouldn't have stood there, but that's how crowded this place was. I was trying to talk to this guy, Jeff, that was Dami's friend, and whom I had taken a course with once.

Finally, seeing some space clear up on the couch, Jeff and I claimed it so we could talk. It felt deserved after all that door maneuvering. We talked about how he was doing. He said he was happy to be done with school, and looking forward to not having exams. Jeff knew one other guy who seemed awfully stoked about the ice Jesus, and the guy asked to partner with him for beer pong.

We also talked with Dan, Jaime's college buddy, who usually comes to these parties. Dan's now a lawyer. He's always had insightful observations about pretty much everything. It turns out Jeff has been part of the ACLU, and asked Dan his opinions. Both seemed to hit it off because they seem to be near each other politically.

I wanted to head to work the following day, so I left just around midnight. Since I wasn't completely sure how to get back, I headed to route 1. It was cold, and I was walking around some motel, and people were making a ruckus, which I wanted to avoid. Turns out, it was nothing. I then thought about eating at this 24 hour diner. But it was locked, despite people on the inside.

I figured, that's good. I already had a dinner, then bought soup, then had some beer at Yancy's, so maybe I should head home and get to sleep.

And that was my Saturday evening.