World of Strange Arrangements

On the longest day of the year, I've got nothing but time.

So when a friend calls to suggest happy hour, something she never does, I am on board immediately.

We agree on Bistro 27 and are the first customers at the bar.

Despite the nearly perfect weather, we do not sit on the patio, a choice which later pays off when a keg explodes, dousing the bartender and manager with beer.

It's pretty funny to see the manager's shirt and short hair wet but even better to see the barkeep's longer hair and bangs dripping with suds.

Hazard of the business, I suppose, but highly hilarious.

We dive into the happy hour menu with mussels in red sauce, two kinds of fries and a caprese salad.

There's a lot to be said for dirt cheap food this good.

A large party arrives and mills about but we ignore them to talk to a just-arrived bartending friend about honeysuckle syrup, $2 baguettes and the foibles of ABC agents.

Restaurant people always have the best stories.

When we part, it is half an hour till sunset, so I spend the next hour at home on my balcony, watching the longest day of the year fade into dusky then inky blue.

Once it is fully night and the sky is dark, I head off to Belmont Food Shop to meet a friend in from out of town.

The bar has only one seat free but there's a sweater on the bar stool, so I have to ask.

It belongs to neither the man on my left nor the woman on my right.

Score! We have a winner and I have a seat, close enough to hear the '20s music playing behind the bar.

Eventually people nearby leave and I move to a space with two adjacent stools.

Of all things, I see Virginia's indigenous grape on the wine list, and order a glass of Horton Norton in honor of my friend, the Norton enthusiast.

It's a tad on the foxy side, but it'll pair just fine with the cook's plate I've ordered.

My friend soon arrives from Washington, as does my cook's plate, and I'm good to go with both.

On the slate are sliced lamb belly, crab and avocado, smoked salmon with roe on cukes, chicken rilletes with a duck heart, duck confit, chicken gizzards, pig's feet, buttered radishes, grilled bread, frisse and pickled fennel.

It's both a heart attack and heaven on a plate and I dive in immediately.

The bartender has already told me that the lamb belly is his favorite thing in the restaurant right now and given its meaty goodness (it's better than a steak), I can understand why.

I slather the fatty rilletes on bread, revel in how the gizzards were cooked in fat and in between every fatty, salty bite, have a piece of tart pickled fennel.

My out-of-town friend tries a bite, then another and is soon raving over the quality and the price of the plate, guessing that it would cost more than twice the price in D.C.

Yet another reason why I live here and not there now.

We pick away at the delectables on the slate while he fills me in on his latest project, an homage to his father, and I regale him with some tid-bits from my trip to Italy last Fall.

A couple comes in looking for food only to be told that at that hour, only the cook's plate is being served.

Without batting an eyelash, I become the salesman to convince them to stay for this array of body parts - hearts, feet, gizzards - and they do.

I am not, however, able to talk them into Virginia's indigenous grape.

The chef comes out to have a well-earned beer and we all get into a discussion of farmers' markets.

When I allow as how I only go to the Byrd Market, I am asked what I buy since it does not appear to them that I ever cook at home.

Hello, I do eat meals besides dinner at home.

I sense that my traveling friend is fading fast, no surprise since it took him four and a half hours to get here from Washington.

When he asks about coffee, I insist he wait until our next stop to caffeinate.

Balliceaux not only provides the cup of joe he needs but also great energy with two DJs because tonight is No Richmond, a night of post-punk.

I run into three friends, including the unlikeliest of shoegazers, before I even make it halfway back.

After my visitor sucks back his liquid energy, I order a glass of wine and lead him to the back where a dance party is in full swing.

We find a good spot just outside the glut of dancers where we have room to move in place as well as observe the dance floor action.

My friend comments (and perhaps judges) that none of the guys move their upper bodies when they dance.

The crowd floods the dance floor for "Dancing with Myself" but I get the biggest kick out of ABC's "Look of Love," another song that thrills the crowd.

Before long, my friend comments that it smells like a boys' locker room in there, but for me it's all about sound, so the smell is irrelevant.

I am having a ball dancing in situ, so much so that one friend presumes I'm drunk (not even close) and another tells me how girlish I look (even less likely).

Must be all this beautiful daylight today. Happy summer solstice to me.