ladies[heart]tk

Okay California Roll Week was an utter failure. I think my problem is that I picked a food that I don’t actually like. Gyro Week was an entirely different experience. I never found it difficult to become enthused about meat popsicle. It’s so salty and delicious. And hard to screw up. As I reflect upon my varied sushi experiences, it occurs to me that I’ve only truly enjoyed sushi once in my life. That was at a place in Palo Alto where the little bamboo boats float around the bar. That place was outstanding. Naturally I can’t remember what it was called or where it was so I’ll just have to savor the memory until I croak. I’ve come to the conclusion that sushi is too complex and elusive a dish to be done well by normal cooks. Apparently it is not uncommon in Japan for a sushi chef’s apprenticeship to last many years. Sushi made by regular cooks is just rice and seaweed. Not the transcendent experience that I experienced in Palo Alto.

Sadly Day 7 of sushi week only confirmed my negative feelings about sushi. I don’t know what I was thinking when I went to a sushi bar in the Mall of America. When I heard about Tiger Sushi, it got uniformly positive reviews so I figured it would be okay, despite the fact that it’s in the Mall of America. First off, it’s really weird to eat at a mall when you’re in the foodcourt. Tiger Sushi isn’t in the food court. It’s in the middle of the mall which is really weird. From where I sat I could see Camp Snoopy, Eddie Bauer and Pretzel Time. It was surreal.

When my California Roll came out I puzzled over it for a while. The Imitation Crab Meat was chopped up into an almost hair-like consistency. I couldn’t figure out how they did it until I realized they put it through a food processor. I guess that way, there’s more air and less food, so the inventory goes farther. The problem with this technique is that the roll looked and felt like someone had taken a pink gerbil, shaved off its fur and then stuffed it into a roll. I didn’t like it. Aside from the heinous environment and the gross food, my other problem with Tiger Sushi is that the service was indifferent to the point of rudeness. The staff weren’t as insufferably incompetent and rude as the “waiters” at Fuij-ya but they were in the same ballpark.  In sum, I would like to say, I’m really effin glad California Week is over.  Now I need a ritual cleansing in a vat of tahini.

Wasabi is off Washington Avenue around the corner from the Metrodome. I was highly skeptical of this place because of their garish billboard with an Asian guy in a chef hat brandishing a couple of ginsu knives and grinning like a minstrel. For some reason I find it irritating when Asian restaurants play up the exotic oriental schtick. Note to aspiring restaurateur: skip the koi pond - spend the money in the kitchen.

That said, the food at Wasabi isn’t bad exactly. The cali roll I had was okay, especially at happy hour prices. It was very similar to what you would get at a fast-food sushi place, or from Byerly’s. My primary complaint about the roll was that it wasn’t made fresh. The food appeared instantly, which makes me think it was pre-made and then put in a fridge somewhere. Because of the refrigeration, the rice was too cold and a little crunchy. It had passed its peak. Also, the rice had a little too much sugar and not enough vinegar - apparently a common defect in midwestern sushi. The imitation crab was pretty good. I liked the flaky texture, but the flavor was very…brief. I can’t think of a better way to describe it.

The weirdest think about Wasabi is that the restaurant draws a sport-fan crowd, owing to its proximity to the Metrodome. As I ate, a long procession of frat rats in Twins jerseys came barreling through the restaurant bellowing and man-hugging. It was weird. Maybe Wasabi should have buffalo wings on the menu. Buffalo wing rolls could be their signature dish. That would be cooler than teppanyaki which I think is gross anyway. At least you wouldn’t get splattered with burning oil.

I think I have to resume california roll week after the fast. When food time rolls around the last thing on earth I want to eat is a california roll. Unless it’s wrapped in bacon and deep-fried. Mmmmm. As long as I’m going to ramble incoherently I may as well mention some funny anecdotes. When my brother-in-law saw my new blog he was all, “why doesn’t he just use a heart symbol in the banner?” Laura was all, “it seems kind of conceited to call it ladies[love]tk. What if people think you think you’re all that?” Also my mom has been sending me Bible verses every day and the very first one was from Ecclesiastes and it was all about accepting the inevitability of death. Nothing like a morbid thought first thing in the morning.

Zen Box is on the skyway in the Quebec building. I go there sometimes for lunch because it’s the closest food place that isn’t Taco Bell or the hated My Burger. Zen Box serves bento box lunches. Except instead of lacquered wooden boxes with lots of little compartments containing small amounts of different dishes, the boxes are styrofoam and they contain rice, two gyoza, some cabbage salad and your choice of protein. Chicken teriyaki is popular, and also cheese-filled tonkatsu which is sort of a weird Japanese spin on a juicy lucy I guess.

I always passed over the small assortment of sushi rolls because I figured sushi wasn’t Zen Box’s core competency so why bother eating it right? But after my mostly positive experience at Target, I was feeling considerably more charitable, and I decided I’d give the cali rolls from Zen Box a go. After all, if I can buy astringent alcohol, car batteries and zippy sushi rolls from the same place, it’s not too much of a stretch to think the same restaurant can make both chicken teriyaki and california rolls.

Holy effin crap was I wrong. First of all, I am willing to bet that these rolls had been sitting around for a very long time, probably overnight, and possibly even two nights. I draw that conclusion from the incredible gumminess of the rice. Rice can only get that gluey and gummy when it’s been sitting around forever. Everything else about the roll was a total disappointment. The seaweed was flavorless. The crab meat was rubbery. The avocado was insubstantial. Also, if you look closely at the picture you can see a miniscule speck of wasabi. The amount of wasabi is insultingly small. If the amount of wasabi were in proportion to the flavorlessness of the roll, there should be a baseball size wad of of it to ease the pain. The thing that I find most irritating about this roll was the utter lack of care that went into its preparation. It’s appalling that cali rolls from a Japanese restaurant can be so inferior to those from Target, but I am sad to report that it is thus.

BTW - as per usual, we all got totally cranked at work and we couldn’t wrench ourselves away from battle for long enough to walk the fifteen minutes to Nami, so we took a raincheck. I think I might just go myself sometime.

Sometimes on Friday the guys I work with go out for lunch. Usually people want to go to My Burger, and I am filled with sadness. I detest My Burger. I actually like hamburgers. But the hamburgers at My Burger are like eating discs of moldy brown carpet that have been heated in the microwave and then daubed with catsup and pickle juice.

The team lunch has always been problematic for me. When I worked at MetLife the team I worked with would always want to go to Hooters. Always. Software engineers, as a general rule, are pretty unattractive people. Now close your eyes and imagine a computer dork smeared with buffalo wing sauce and ogling a tightly be-panted waitress. OMG, I just vomited a little.

I’m back.

So today there was an email thread going around about going to a place called Nami tomorrow. I guess that’s a sushi place someplace downtown. Nami was suggested by a new guy on the team who is an adventurous eater, comparatively speaking. He’s always trying to get people to go to Zen Box, or Tensuke. One day I confronted him in his cube.

“Tom you’re not from around here are you?”

He got all cagey and was like, “why do you say that?”

I was all, “how come you never want to go to My Burger? How come you’re always trying food from different cultures?”

Finally he broke down and admitted that he went to college in Boston where it’s difficult to find hamburgers. It was there that he developed a taste for sushi.

So anyway, tomorrow I’m going to Nami. I have a friend who went there once and said, “it blows.” So I’m not going to get my hopes up, but it has to be better than Hooters.