My husband and I recently had dinner with friends at Double Knot in Philadelphia. The izakaya-style Japanese restaurant serves a variety of Asian dishes. It was a return visit for all of us, though I haven’t dined in the restaurant for several years.

We arrived in time for our reservation and were seated in the dimly lit, basement-level dining room. Double Knot serves dishes á la carte, or diners can select the chef’s tasting menu with 10 selections served family style. The four of us decided to order the tasting menu, and we opted to have the chef select our courses for us. There was one shellfish allergy at our table, but otherwise we were open to try anything!

We ordered wine and Japanese beer while we waited for our surprise dishes to arrive. Dishes arrived quickly, and we hungrily devoured cucumber salad, salmon sashimi, short rib skewers, dumplings, tuna sushi and Japanese fried chicken. When our dessert of mochi ice cream arrived, we thought we still had a couple dishes left in our meal but assumed we miscounted. After we finished our ice cream, a busser brought us a plate of sea bass. We checked with our server, who apologized and said we did indeed have a few courses left in our meal. So, our “dessert” ended up being sea bass, crispy Brussels sprouts and pork tonkatsu! While this was an unusual way to end a meal, I was happy we didn’t miss out on these flavorful dishes.

Despite the out-of-order end to our meal, I enjoyed dinner at Double Knot and look forward to returning soon.

— Katie Skrzek, vice president/digital director