Dish of the Week: Donburi

Where: Daikaya, Donburi, Kushi-Moto

We are coming to learn in D.C. that Japanese food goes beyond sushi. Kushi was a pioneer in introducing the izakaya concept – small plates of snack food to go along with your drinking – to the city. Houses of ramen soon followed. The next trend from the Land of the Rising Sun seems to be donburi.

The fast food concept is as basic as it gets: It’s a bowl of rice with stuff on top. Word-wise donburi simply means bowl; the dish is so common in the alleyways of Tokyo, it has co-opted the name of its dishware. The shortened form of the word “don: is a suffix to the dish. So katsudon would be fried pork cutlets on top of the bowl of rice, unadon a bowl with grilled eel. A typical donburi sauce combines a mix of dashi, soy sauce, and mirin.

Daikaya, a split level ramen and izakaya operation across from the Verizon Center, recently began offering lunch service upstairs with the menu revolving around the bowls of rice, toppings, and sauce. Daikaya offers traditional options like a thinly sliced tuna with scallions, sesame seeds, and nori, and a traditional grilled eel with eel sauce and Shanso peppers. A Yakitori chicken bowl with house-made teriyaki sauce and toasted coconut is a favorite from Chef Katsuya Fukushima’s childhood, as is a vegetarian curry bowl. The Japanese curry or kare – a thick, rich, slightly sweet stew – was borrowed from the British in the mid-1800s.

The Japanese-influenced bowl of rice concept extends to South Pacific neighbors. Daikaya’s menu includes a Hawaiian Loco Moco, a Japanese-style Salisbury steak with a fried egg and a dab of mustard on the lip of the bowl. One of the most flavorful dishes is sisig, a Filipino sizzling pork hash. The restaurant is donating all proceeds from sales of that particular dish to the World Food Programs for typhoon victims.

Adams Morgans’ newest dining option—opening night was just this Wednesday—is named after the dish. The minimalist space of the fast casual concept sports 14 stools around a counter and a selection of eight Japanese rice bowls. The signature is a mixture of fried pork and a fried shrimp, the proteins battered in homemade panko breadcrumbs. Newly minted owner James Jang, 25, did most of the interior work on the restaurant himself, and is the one assembling and delivering the bowls from behind the counter. Upon ordering a bowl of sakedon, he pulls a fresh salmon filet from below the counter, carves it up into sashimi style pieces, and fans it completely across the bowl along with thinly sliced onions, fresh wasabi, nori, and, of course, the donburi sauce.

Small Bites

Giant Step for Shaw
Giant’s O Street Market store at City Market opened its doors at 9th and O Streets NW this week with a Thursday ribbon cutting ceremony. The space incorporates the historic O Street Market structure, a building on the National Register of Historic Places, with the produce section set up like a 19th century market place. This is overlooked by a cafe and seating area with WiFi and reconstructed steel trusses. When you go, expect a high-end take-home section, with an expanded deli and a pizza and sushi bar. At 72,000 square feet, the new store is one of the largest in the district. You may think you died and went to Wegmans!

Taste of Trucks
On Monday afternoon, thirteen of D.C.’s food trucks will partner with Share our Strength for their Taste of the Nation event by donating a portion of their day’s sales to the organization’s programs to fight childhood hunger in America. Takorean, Borinquen Lunch Box, Rolling Ficelle, and several others will fan out to locations across the District and Arlington. To see who and where you can eat from with 10 percent of your money going to charity, tweet @ToTNationDC .

RIS Adds D.C.’s Best Pastry Chef
West End restaurant RIS is adding Beverly Bates to their team as executive pastry chef. Bates, who formerly worked for Jeffrey Buben at Bistro Bis, Vidalia, and Woodward Table, took home this year’s best pastry chef RAMMY award. Along with overseeing desserts at the restaurant, Bates will also create desserts for RIS at Union Market, a stall in the Northeast hall that is scheduled to open next month.