Heart, Loin and Ice

To the far reaches I went tonight.

1708 was opening Jessica Segall's show, "A Thirsty Person," which spanned two journeys and had a fair crowd when we got there.

Segall had done residencies in the Arctic and Mongolia and the exhibit spoke to both, while she provided the anecdotes during her talk.

She'd traveled to Mongolia for a self-directed residency, expecting to find a third world sensibility.

"Everybody had solar panels, so they all had cell phones and TVs," she admitted with surprise. "The new thing is they herd sheep with motorcycles because it's more fun than on a horse."

"Cultures change quickly," she said, explaining the importance of documenting them.

So much for jokes about outer Mongolia.

The very abstract black and beige pieces used the varied patterns of solar panels as elements.

Further back, the work sprung from her Arctic adventure with old refrigerators sitting around, opened and lit, some on their sides and others upside down.

The centerpiece was a copper screen chilled by a freezer coil and showing a video of Segall in an elaborate solar-insulated costume she'd designed and worn for the shoot.

With the coil constantly cooling, the screen was slowly being covered by ice.

Segall told us we could touch it, but not to scratch our names in it.

The image on the screen was particularly lyrical because of the frosty layer forming over the image  of the colorful Goya-inspired costume being broken up by areas of luminous copper.

It had a vintage photograph look - an exotic-looking woman on an icy landscape.

Near the front of the gallery was a photograph of her in the costume on top of the global seed vault (yes, there is one), with nothing but ice all around.

For me, I try to fathom so cold a place when I have cold hands inside my gloves on this merely 37 degree night.

The art lover and I went our separate ways as I headed up the hill to the far reaches of Church Hill to meet a buddy at Dutch & Co.

It was prime time, so I walked into a bustling bar under low, gas light and never even saw my friend, buried in the back at a table.

As it turned out, the benefits were its proximity to the Sub Rosa bread and the loo.

I joined the Cotes du Rhone lover in a glass of 2010 Ferraton et Fils, full of ripe fruit and blood-thickening warmth.

Winter is wearing out its welcome for this thin-blooded Irish type.

Best of all, he was already knee-deep in conversation with the two-top next door, who also happened to be the owners of Anderson's Neck Oyster Company, the ones served there.

How conveniently social for us.

Just last summer, I'd done a big piece on local oysters for a Northern Neck magazine and had talked to all kinds of oyster-raising folk, from the Rappahannock River Oyster Company cousins to a grandfather/granddaughter duo who began doing it to share a hobby and benefit the river.

This lovely couple was still doing it for philanthropic purposes, not yet having actually earned a profit on their endeavor but already increasing from 50,000 to 8 million seed oysters.

Since I'd had their oysters the first time I'd been in D & C, I felt comfortable telling them how much I'd enjoyed them.

My friend and I went even further, ordering a couple of plates of them off the $5 chalkboard menu.

Glasses of the Whitehall Lane viognier accompanied it and our server, affirmed it all, saying, "That is the way to start a meal."

Over bivalves, we talked news since he is the only other human I know besides my parents and me who still gets the Washington Post delivered to him everyday.

It is a unique bond.

So when I ask if he's read a certain article, he will begin with, "Front page of Style, left hand corner?" and I will confirm the location of the piece before we discuss its contents.

This is a singular pleasure to a newspaper nerd.

I was telling him about the 1708 opening I'd just seen when our server came up and joined in, saying she liked 1708 for how "out there" they were willing to go in showing art.

That's my kind of server.

When it came time to order, he wavered between the monkfish and skirt steak, eventually choosing the latter.

That worked out well for me because it came with a smoked pork belly, celery root, persimmon, brussels sprouts and ginger herb sauce that he was too full to eat.

As far as I was concerned, one entree seemed boring when I could get three small plates off tonight's $5 menu.

Cured venison loin and celery root were sliced paper thin and dotted with a rich, sweet  blueberry beet sauce.

Venison merquez meatballs came atop cashew and pickled grape anchoiade for a satisfying contrast in flavors.

Corned beef heart was a thing of beauty with pickled mustard seed and peppery arugula.

When our server came to ask how we liked our food, I couldn't help but state the obvious.

Chef Caleb's a master with meat.

She laughed at my terminology but acknowledged that I was exactly right.

Shoot, the heart and loin told me everything I needed to know.

Since it was my friend's first time there, he scoped out the room, pondering the authenticity of the pressed tin ceiling, noting the wine shelving and the bar's materials.

I still maintain that the place looks lifted from Edward Hopper's painting, "Nighthawks," a reassuringly lit presence on Marshall Street.

He finds the interior too dim, making menu-reading challenging for him.

What a drag it is getting old.

As we finished up, the place was emptying out, not surprising given their 10:00 closing hour.

It would not be a meal out for this friend and me without dessert, so we agreed upon the chocolate chicory toffee cake with chunks of walnut nougat, decorative lines of orange "taffy," chocolate ganache and a mint sauce.

I found the mint sauce to be maybe one component too many, but the nougat was like something I made with my grandmother as a child, a unique touch.

And while taffy was a misnomer, the orange flavor complemented the chocolate even without the chew factor.

By then, we were among the very few, so we gathered up our necessaries and headed out into the not-so far reaches of the city.

That was some good eating.