84. Passionfish
As I turned the corner on a Mainstreet U.S.A-style pedestrian street in Reston, I had a little panic. Crap, white tablecloths. Crap, people in suits. Crap, I’m in jeans. I couldn’t back out, so I went for it. Luckily, no one said a thing and I wasn’t forced to wear a pair of loaner pants from the closet in the back that they save for degenerate diners. Passionfish is owned by the same group that has DC Coast, Ten Penh and Ceiba in their repertoire, and if this restaurant was located on K Street it would be just as fancy. Lucky for me, it is not.
Passionfish, believe it or not, is a seafood restaurant. Complete with raw bar full of too-perfect-to-be-real lobsters and oysters perched on crushed ice. The silverware even has little fishtails at the non-utensil end. I mean, that is a theme if I’ve ever seen one. The menu is just as fishy as the decor, so much so that even after our waiter pointed out the non-seafood option available I still had a hard time finding it. Some of that has to do with the fact that the menu is kind of all over the place. Theres the raw bar, the sushi menu, hot appetizers, cold appetizers, entrees and sides. There’s a lot going on. And what is it with restaurants in Reston and their perfunctory sushi menus? This one makes a lot more sense than the sushi at Jackson’s Mighty Fine Food, but still. If Sushi-Ko opened an outpost in the Town Center there would be lines around the block.
There are tons of delicious sounding options on the menu, but since their crab cake had a fine showing in the Washington Post crab cake-off, I decided to take the plunge (seafood joke!). It was damn near all lump, and as a result was pretty much impossible to pick up and eat. It’s a shame too because not only was the bun nice and buttery, and there was a roasted tomato piled on as well which gave a nice bite to all the creaminess. But the truth is, I will trade a filler-full crab cake on a bun for a knife and fork any day though. And my dining companions probably appreciated not having to watch me shove a messy sandwich in my face. As if I needed another reason to like this place, there were sweet potato fries, and lots of ‘em. The fries were nice and starchy, and had been lightly fried so they didn’t end up tasting just like grease and salt. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I ended up using the Old Bay-infused tartar sauce for dipping my fries instead of on the sandwich (see above re: messiness), and it was quite the inspired combo, if I do say so myself.
I’m sorry that Passionfish isn’t closer to downtown—I’d gladly trade it for DC Coast, which I think has lost some of it’s luster in the past few years. After two trips to Reston, the food (and abundance of parking) has made such an impression on me that I even found myself slowing down and taking a long look at the apartments available as I got back on the toll road. Thoughts of spending more quality time in Reston were instantly over with though when I got stuck in a major and inexplicable backup on I-66 coming back in to town. Oh Reston, I hardly knew ye.
