Few things make me happier than enjoying great food with great company at a great discount -- last week was DC (Winter) Restaurant Week, that wonderful time of year when hundreds of fabulous restaurants offer relatively reasonable prix fixe lunches and dinners to bring great food to the masses (us)! My friends and I decided to try Ceiba, a fantastic Latin-fusion restaurant inspired by Yucatan, Brazilian, Peruvian, and Cuban cuisine. Everything was perfectly cooked with delicately balanced flavors (though I know little about it, I'm quickly becoming a huge fan of Latin-American cuisine). Tuesday night, even the Metro epic fail couldn't spoil my dinner.
We started the meal with a delicious cumin flatbread and caipirinhas. For the first course, I had an amazing blue crab tortilla soup, velvety smooth with little exotic spikes of heat and crunchy tortilla strips on top. (Side note, I love when restaurants bring the soup bowl out with the soup in a separate vessel which they pour over some lovely featured ingredient (in this case, blue crab) which they want you to see first.)
Next I had duck two ways: confit leg and a seared breast so crispy the skin melted in my mouth, leaving behind a blend of spices I can never hope to list nor recreate. The confit was rich, served over a bed of Peruvian fried rice, plated with a Huancaina (drat, already forgot what on earth is in it!) sauce was creamy and light.
Dessert was a heavenly chocolate cake with an airy chocolate mousse scented with something like cinnamon (and a sampling of my fellow diners' flan with honey-tequila oranges).
(This restaurant earns extra points in my book for its vibrant atmosphere and central, metro-accessible location.)
UMM I should have given you some huaicaina when you were at my house. Did you see it in the fridge?? DELICIOUS. It was my fave in Peru. SO GOOD. Things you should not try: cuy, and anticucho. Tell me when you already don't have an appetite and I'll tell you what those are.
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