Sushi - My Take

Random thoughts –

People reading this might want to flame me right away - but hear me out first! I think sushi is overrated. Okay, okay; calm down. What I mean is, I feel people eat it to say “I ate sushi last night for dinner” while stressing sooo-sheeee. It’s like Starbucks. I hate the place. It’s not that I hate drinking it – or eating sushi – but it’s how people make it out to be: trendy. If you really do like eating sushi, appreciate the way it’s done, know what you’re eating, how to do it, then more power to you. The same with Starbucks. But if you do it, well, just to do it, please stop making fools of yourselves when you’re with people that do appreciate it. Take your California roll, your newly found knowledge of using chopsticks, and your cup of green tea with the sugar packet, and sit in the back. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy one of my favorite scenes from the movie Fight Club where they destroy a coffeehouse chain by letting a piece of art roll through it, smashing the glass, and demolishing it. Bravo!

Now then, to those who truly enjoy sushi, I am your apprentice. I tried it before, and while I didn’t dislike it, it wasn’t too exciting for me. Now that I’ve read about it, heard discussions, appreciate new food, I now have a new found appreciation for sushi. So much so that I have found myself having cravings lately. Thanks to The Dudes, they gave me a menu that I bring with me to the sushi chefs, and they prepare what they have available. So far, I never went wrong. Until yesterday. And it was baaaaaad.

If anyone has said they didn’t like sushi when they ate some they picked up from a grocery store to try at home and completely wrote it off – GIVE IT ANOTHER CHANCE AT A PROPER SUSHI ESTABLISHMENT! See, a couple nights ago we had a craving for sushi. It was 11PM. Every place around me closed at that time, except one Ichiban Sushi (http://ichiban-sushi.com/). Well, they were closed, but they told me they would wait for me. 15 minutes later, and I walked into a dark restaurant where they were waiting for me with delicious toro, unagi, spicy tuna rolls, Philly rolls, and more. We ate nicely that evening. The next day, we wanted more. We didn’t want to drop another $40, though. We opted to go to the grocery store. You can see where this going already: MISTAKE! For half the price, we had a lot to choose from. Yes, I know sushi grade seafood needs to be fresh. I understand the significance. I know this will be lower quality that real sushi places. But how bad could it be? I found out. As soon as I opened the package, I smelled fish. One thing that fish should not smell like, ironically, is fish. This was not in my face, knock me over, but enough that I knew right there the sacrifice should have been made to dump the extra cash. I opened the other two trays. Same thing. We opened our soy sauce, ginger, and wasabi packets, and we dig in. My gosh, it was awful. I still put up with it. In fact, I ate about half, but at the end, I couldn’t take it. In fact, the last piece I spit up into my napkin. I don’t think I’ve done that since I was a child when my Parents made me eat vegetables. Horrible. The mixture of imitation crab, avocado, mayonnaise with brown rice was not good.

So people, please, take it from my hard lesson learned: when ordering sushi, do so at a restaurant. And if you’re just starting out, make sure it’s a good sushi restaurant, and you’re with people who “get it.” You will not do it, so you can be seen eating it, but you will grab the pieces with your fingers, dunk it in the soy sauce, tilt your head back, and insert it in your mouth. You will feel and taste the creamy goodness of a toro fatty tuna. You’ll sense the texture of the tako octopus. You will appreciate sushi.