Sake!

Cloudy or Demon Killer? You be the judge...

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The House won the competition between Ozumo ("A mix of a fun atmosphere set in a stylish Japanese setting") and Farallon (and its website of crashing waves and submerging bubbles). The Guardian Angel and I have another food tradition: one night to ourselves, at a restaurant neither one of us has ever visited. Lisa had been to Farallon and we both had been (although only for drinks) to Ozumo.

And so it would be The House. Located on Grant at Columbus, The House is slender and cramped, take-out sized converted into full-on gastronomy. Such congestion creates the illusion of exclusivity (it's always full) and the possibilities for calamity (a waiter broke a water glass at the table next to us, spilling deadly H2o across the table. One casualty was a patron's cell phone, and he tried to calm the embarrassed waiter by saying "It's okay. I have insurance! I have insurance!").

Lisa and I began with cold sake. On the left was the cloudy Nigori sake. On the right was the Onikoroshi, or Demon Killer Sake. If you believe in the advertisements (generally a mistake), the Nigori is supposed to contain  fruity notes and generally be the sweetest of the sakes, while the Onikoroshi boasts vanilla and caramel notes.

Not on this night.

We both found the Nigori to be rather tasteless and the Demon Killer to be sharp, the fruiter and more aromatic of the two. The night had just begun...