MiShi. 5507 Connecticut Ave., NW
BirdSong, the sophisticated Thai restaurant that restaurateur Aaron Gordon and chef Kitima Boonmala opened last year on upper Connecticut Avenue, is taking on a second identity on September 17. It will now also be home to MiShi, an izakaya and sushi pop-up.
Gordon, who also runs the family-oriented Little Beast up the street, got the idea from his 11-year-old daughter Mila, a sushi fanatic.
“She will scream and cry at me to take her to sushi,” Gordon says. “Eventually she got the idea stuck in her head that I had to do sushi myself.”
To open MiShi (a combination of “Mila” and “sushi”), Gordon tapped chef Michael Kang, who most recently worked at a wagyu beef company closely linked to the Japanese government, after stints at The Oval Room, Oyamel, and Nobu.
The two are calling MiShi a pop-up, though it’s likely to be permanent: more like a second restaurant concept in the same kitchen. At the same time, BirdSong is opening for lunch for the first time this weekend. Kang’s dishes and an abbreviated Thai menu will be available at both lunch and dinner starting September 19.
Why double up on concepts in the same space? There’s plenty of room at BirdSong to branch out, Gordon says, because “our kitchen in some ways is too big.” Opening in an existing restaurant also helps Kang keep prices down.
When diners arrive, two separate menus will hit the table. They can order freely from both Boonmala’s Thai menu and Kang’s luxurious Japanese offerings.
The latter include nigiri, sashimi, and hand rolls, along with izakaya-style hot and cold small plates like chawanmushi with uni and caviar; fries cooked in wagyu tallow; hamachi tiradito with mandarin, ají amarillo, and persimmon;and soy-braised A5 wagyu shank over pine nut congee. You can also order a flight of different cuts of tuna from the same fish.
“We’re trying to break the stereotype of cheap sushi inside of an Asian restaurant,” Kang says.
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.
