For Ray's birthday, I took him to the one place in the Harbor that has sushi (well, maybe there is sushi out in Seabrook or at the Ocean Crest on occasion, but I'm talking a place that bills itself as a sushi place). I used to think sushi was like pizza, there was no bad of it, that is, except for the kind that might take your life or just be off, but I think the sushi we ate was among the most appalling foodstuffs we could have eaten because it wasn't the kids that could kill you, or even give you heinous food poisoning. That I would have accepted. No, this was just the laziest, most pathetic, most irrationally bad sushi we could have ever encountered. Gordon Ramsay would have torched this alleged sushi-chef's tuches, that's for sure. I'm trying to be semi-anonymous but it's hard when there's only one joint in town that matches the description. I'm sure the teriyaki and yakisoba is better. I mean, the place is open, right?
How bad was it? You ask. Well, I say, have you ever eaten Hamachi (yellowfin) that tasted like cod liver oil that has been sitting in the back of grandma's cabinet for a couple of years, what with no one actually buying cod liver oil anymore now that fish oil comes in capsules? No, you say. Well, that is how bad the Hamachi was. If you aren't aware, the flavor of the fish should be smooth and clean and in no way repulsive. The wasabi, I think, left me with sores inside my mouth. The rice was probably a day old and completely unseasoned. The fish was, Hamachi aside, reasonable tasting. But, this dreadful yellowfin madness aside, sushi and sashimi are about achieving the sublime. The Aberdeen sushi place was an abject failure on this front.
One of the ways sushi and sashimi are supposed to get all sublime all in your grill is the presentation. I found the presentation lacking, but then, it's hard for any food to look good under ancient fluorescent lights that are only intermittently on. I'm not going to knock the sushi place for having a Soviet/developing world atmosphere, because that's kind of common on the Harbor. Usually I like it because it means the place is authentic and cheap, just like me.
The mistake was corrected by a DQ Pumpkin Pie Blizzard. Holy diabetes, Batman, they are awesome.
The reason I rail against the sushi place is that last night I had a sublime sushi dinner in Tacoma at Fujiya. It's a restaurant I didn't know even existed when I was down there. Ray and I were in town for the Martin Short show (more on that in a minute), and he was quite insistent we go to Fujiyama even though he is not the biggest Japanese food fan (so why take him for a sushi dinner? His choice out of the two I gave him and also I get to take him out of his "comfort zone" for his birthday. It's just something we've established over the two birthdays of his we've been together). He wanted me to get my sushi swerve back on. He really pulled me back from the brink.
I had an awesome sushi dinner, and the waitress (who was totally gorgeous and VERY professional) even pointed out all the sushis I had for dinner. "That's Hamachi, or yellowfin," she said, pointing to a yellowy-white sliver of fish that was nothing like the gray underbelly cut I ate the week before. "It's my favorite."
That yellowfin saved yellowfin for me. I even gave Ray a bite. "That's what it's supposed to taste like," I said. He couldn't disagree that it was delightful. The maguro was buttery and umami-riffic. And the service was insane. The chefs at Fujiya have a neat trick for staying entertained and keeping you happy — they make little dishes that get passed to your table "just because." It's nothing you've ordered, but it's really cool to have these little plates come to the table. We got two little pieces of spicy tuna wrapped in nori and tempura-fried and a little warm "salad" of octopus bits and taro in a sweetish sauce. The octopus was just melt-in-your-mouth. We got a scoop of green tea ice cream and a scoop of coconut ice cream before we left, and let me just say, these were WAY bigger scoops than you normally get at Japanese restaurants and the coconut ice cream in particular was to die for.
So then we went to the Pantages for the Martin Short show. He called it his "I should have saved" tour. Bwa ha ha ha. Saw former boss George in the foyer. He seemed happy. Said there were seven people in the newsroom at the Gateway. That's more than when I left, and considering that the economy has been brutal to papers and McClatchy has all kinds of layoffs makes me wonder how the paper is managing it. Maybe he's counting Hugh?
But anyway, there were a couple of drunk lady hecklers. What did they think this was, a Ren Faire bawdy juggler show? The opening act was a folk singer who sang some depressing songs, including one about a wedding called something like, "Let's get on with the illusion." Geez, we're not living in the fifties anymore, you can aim a little higher in life nowadays. It kind of inspired me to use my banjo skills to write songs, but about stuff I'd want to hear about: Robot overlords, Ultimate Frisbee, why aerobics instructors have to have perfect hair while they lead class at the GH YMCA and, uh, you know, anything that happens underwater. Like a seamonkey celebration parade, or a bottom-feeder get together at the local underwater bar. I guess if I wanted to write a love song it would be abou two little emo kids finding love, but their bangs get in the way if they make out.
So Martin Short is pretty much exactly the same person he's always been except he's a little older and his picture looks like he's had some work done (which he denied, saying "No one says, 'ooh, who's the 35-year-old,' they say, 'Who's the 58-year-old whose face caught on fire?' " so maybe he just had some photoshopping? Or his eyes are just really that big and twinkly?) and maybe his weird dance with the knees stuck together is one tenth of a second slower. But his mind is still fast, and he's just so hilarious. I love his mixture of kitschy old-timey Hollywood bombast and the kooky creative stuff. Some stuff, like the video of him being Hillary Clinton, didn't work so good (even though, dang, when made up he looks a LOT like her). But the Jiminy Glick stuff (with Drew Carey cast dude Ryan Stiles, also of the Whose Line is it Anyway series of shows I find pretty unfunny) was awesome. And he was Ed Grimley for a minute, even though Ray has no idea who that is. Best joke of the night, when a theater lady came out to give him a champagne — "Asti Spumante with three Sweet N Lows, just how I like it! (sip) I like my women like I like my champagne — compliments of the theater!"
On the ride home I kept Ray awake by playing "This American Life"'s podcast of part two of their look into the financial crisis of '08. Sadly, I did not make more than 30 minutes into it before I just nodded out. This is in spite of heroic amounts of green tea we had consumed earlier.
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