01/20/2007: "Sushi until death"

music: none
mood: full

Last night we had all-you-can-eat sushi at Ichiban after work. Some might question the sanity of eating all-you-can-eat sushi after being sick for three days, but Dan planned this a week ago and I had six or seven days worth of sushi hankerin' stored up.

After reading some of Anthony Bourdain's culinary adventures I have been feeling particularly adventurous lately when it comes to food. I've always said I was willing to try eating anything once but haven't ever really been put to the test. I've learned a few lessons though. Things like, you can't do anything to organ meat to make it palatable for me, I just can't do shrimp no matter how good it looks (it's a texture thing), and brie is the best cheese ever.

But last night I was like a sushi commando, plucking strange and exotic fruits of the sea from their floating perches like a sniper, demolishing nigiri in single bites.

I love unagi, or grilled eel marinated in a sweet teriyaki-like sauce. There were big hunks of it on the rice pillows. I love the sweetness, the velvety texture of the meat, and the surprising, satisfying crunch of tiny bones.

My most adventurous and happy discovery last night was octopus nigiri. It looks horrifying, I know. But it was absolutely delicious. It has a mild flavor, kind of like whitefish. Its texture is kind of chewy, but not chewy enough to induce my gag reflex like shrimp or lobster. I don't know how else to describe the meat besides satisfying. I was chewing, and I knew I was chewing on meat. primal instincts flooded my brain with endorphins. Yes, I was eating a tentacle with visible suction cups. It was fantastic.

I did, however, also have what might have been the worst culinary experience of my life. These innocent little nigiri kept floating past made with an innocuous looking translucent white meat. It looked harmless enough. It reminded me of the bottom half of a blue whale. That should have been my first clue. Would I ever want to eat whale? No, I don't think so. But at that point I was right in the middle of my bold bravado. I pulled that thing off the boat, sniffed it a bit first, then crammed it in my mouth.

Oh. my. fucking. gods. No.

Never before have I experienced something quite so entirely wrong. I've got texture issues with pork. I've got texture issues with most shellfish. And now I know that I sure as hell have texture issues with this kind of squid. First of all, it was a large piece and there was quite a bit of rice to hold it up. I was gagging because there was too much of it in my mouth. But as I started to chew I started gagging because my brain was screaming, "no, no, no, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!" It didn't taste like anything. But it was SLIMY and COLD and nearly unchewable and did I mention really fucking SLIMY? So I did what I always do in that situation. I thought about spitting it out in my napkin. No, couldn't do that, it was a cloth napkin. So I took a drink of water and just swallowed whatever was left in my mouth. I actually felt queasy after that. I felt like I had been violated. Surely the sushi chef was playing a cruel joke on us stupid gaijin. "Ha-ha! Look how good this looks! Surely they'll eat it! Then they'll be too polite to spit it out straight into the sushi boat moat!"

I have had good squid. I'm just OK with calamari, but dried squid is AWESOME. Salty-chewy-yum.

Another good find was some sort of mussel nigiri. It looked like some sort of pillowy mushroom. It was on the chewy side but it tasted very meaty and good.

We walked out of Ichiban that night so full we were almost physically ill.

The service was piss-poor, but that and the evil squid were the only bad things about the night. Not bad for an end-of-week hoo-rah.

I've had good sushi experiences and bad sushi experiences. I just remembered my first (and only) experience with roe. They certainly looked enticing. Like tiny balls of Jello or those wonderful tapioca pearls in bubble tea. I picked one lone egg up and put it in my mouth. I'll never forget the moment when the skin broke and released that salty torrent of hate upon my tongue. I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth for hours after that. Yuck, just yuck.