2011 Fall Dining Guide
By Tom Sietsema
Sunday, October 16, 2011

"Anything you don't care for, or wish to have again?" the beguiling young server at Komi asks two diners who have previously had the great fortune of experiencing the modern Greek cooking of Johnny Monis. "We're in the chef's hands," I reply. There's no written menu; all we know is that the forthcoming feast in the most Spartan of four-star dining rooms will move from light to rich, from fish to meat to sweet, and involve a few surprises. First out of the kitchen is a pageant of finger foods. A bite of brioche with an orange cap of caviar, raw strips of red bream and mackerel as good as I've enjoyed from any sushi master, a trio of scallop presentations, and a crisp little package that comes with instructions to eat it in one bite. The moment our teeth sink into the golden dice, a river of liquid spanakopita rushes over our tongues. The dishes - exquisite pastas, a cocktail of smoke and peaches - arrive in easy succession, a pace that allows time to contemplate the ingenuity of one of the brightest stars in the Washington dining firmament. Sweetbreads with sea urchin and "figs from Johnny's dad's yard"? Magic. A bar of stamp-size flatbread alternating over and over again with beef tongue and ending with a tiny tomato salad is introduced as the chef's "100-layer gyro." Fun - and fab. The fantasy is suspended with a main dish of pork that is neither as succulent nor as crisp as I remember, but it picks up again with another sip of wine, some chocolate baklava, an engaging chat with the server, house-made salted lemon lollipops with the check. When can I come back?