Before you ask I didn't eat the insides of any rare animal on the streets of Tokyo, as Tony would. Nope, I went much smaller than that. I finally tried Sushi after years of saying I wouldn't. Let me just say that I am not a fish person. At the risk of sounding like an idiot, fish is just TOO fishy! If it tastes like fish, I want nothing to do with it. I'm going to go out on a limb and even say that I'm not even too fond of Crabs (which, as a Marylander, is sacreligous). But I vowed to do something scary and unexpected, so that's what I did. I have friends that like it so I relied on them to steer me in the right direction. I had absolutely no idea about sushi and had no idea what to expect. But lucky for me, others have a more refined palate than I do so I had an in : )
As you can see there are two pictures of the sushi that I tried. I decided to approach this scientifically and actually tried it at two different restaurants (Actually I just had 2 friends that wanted to try something scary with me so that's what I did : ) As a newbie to sushi I was told I was to try "Maki" first which apparently means that the fish (or seafood in this case) is not raw. It's actually cooked. In a complete coincidence, both friends chose the exact same 2 maki rolls for me to try so it all worked out quite scientifically, if I do say so myself) The first I tried was the Classic California Roll. It contained imitation crabmeat, avocado, cucumber, rice and seaweed. Second was the Tempura Shrimp Roll. This contained tempura shrimp (obviously : ) seaweed, rice and I believe something else but I'm blanking on what. Also on each plate, there was pickled ginger, and wasabi. I chose not even to attempt either of these things, because: a: I had already conquered my scary thing for the week (sushi) and b: As a foodie I stil have no idea what "wasabi" is or what would would possess someone to pickle ginger!
I must admit that as a Chinese food fan, I'm completely clueless as how to use chopsticks. This was a problem seeing as you're not supposed to use a fork or your fingers with sushi. I will not go so far as to say that after this experience I am "chopstick fluent" but I did get by which is more than I've ever done before).
Conclusions:
After my intial reactions ("Wow, that shrimp still has it's tail on!"), we began to dig in. I learned that the protocol for eating sushi is to pick it up with the chopsticks (easier said than done), dip it into soy sauce and pop the whole thing in your mouth in one fell swoop (contrary to all rules of etiquette that I've ever learned, but that's beisde the point : ) I started with the California Roll. The imitation crabmeat made it quite salty so dipping it into the soy sauce made it overly salty. But it wasn't bad. I chose to finish eating it with no soy sauce, contray to the rules. Then I tried the Tempura Shrimp roll. This one was quite good. The shrimp wasn't salty, so the soy added the perfect amount of flavor. It was quite larger than the other roll, so it's quite a bit harder to pop the whole thing in your mouth , but I got by. All in all, it wasn't a bad introduction to sushi. I came to the conclusion that it was good and not nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be. However, I ate quite tame things so I may not have been as happy if my friends had chosen octopus and sea urchin for me. I still don't quite understand how it's eaten as a full meal. When we had polished it off, I was ready for some friend rice or at the very least; dessert. All in all, if you were to ask me out for sushi tomorrow, I'd be sure to verify that the restaurant had other food too, so I didn't go hungry : ) but I'd still eat some, just to be sociable.
Next up: Who knows?
