If you copy and paste their menu into a reply, we can tell you what is on it that doesn’t contain raw fish. Because sushi restaurants who don’t sell anything but raw fish simply do not exist.
I don’t understand the sushi proselytizing in this thread. The question was about someone choosing a very specialized cuisine for a group get together without considering the tastes of your guests.
I would never invite a group out to a highly specialized restaurant unless I was sure that everyone on the list enjoyed that specialty.
That said the “birthday girl” can do whatever she darn well pleases to celebrate her birthday. But if she ever asks why she didn’t see you there tell her straight out that that her choice made it impossible for you to attend.
One more point. I don’t know where the posters on this thread live but I am 50 years old. I have lived in Michigan and the North East. I have traveled in the inter-mountain west and up and down the east coast. I don’t believe I have ever even set eyes on a sushi restaurant. This may be a big thing in the big cities on the coast but not so much elsewhere.
I think it’s a bit odd for a lot of us to view sushi as “a very specialized cuisine.”
If you’ve never set eyes on a sushi restaurant, your eyes ust not have processed what they saw. I grew up in Ohio and I saw sushi restaurants. Heck, the Kroger in a low income Appalachian coal mining community in Ohio had sushi. (Not good sushi, mind you.) This is not some sort of inconceivably foreign cuisine.
As jsgoddess said, sushi is pretty damn ubiquitous. If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t been looking for it. Every Japanese steakhouse that I’ve been to has had sushi on the menu. Every Chinese buffet place I’ve been to in the last five years has had it. Every major super market sells it.
You can’t get any more pedestrian than a California roll.
Hell, I’ve even seen sushi at Walgreens, of all places.
The OP seems to working under multiple faulty assumptions (and it seems you have the same ones), so a lot of posters are trying to open his/her eyes to the truth.
Sushi isn’t very specialized. There are vegetarian versions, there are raw fish versions, there are cooked fish versions, and there are versions containing all three components plus more.
Sushi is widely eaten. It stopped being exotic in the U.S. decades ago. So it is not as though the OP’s friend decided to have her party at a bushmeat café that serves grubs as appetizers. In a random group of 10 urbanites, I’d guess there will probably be 7 sushi fans, 2 “California roll-only” types, and 1 who either dislikes it because of a bad experience or because they assume its too foreign or pretentious for their tastes. The balance will shift the farther you move into suburbia and beyond, but not that much.
I think my main problem with many of the replies here is all the folks who have described the birthday girl as “hostess” or called it “her party.” The OP says everyone is paying for his/her own meal. Thus, there is no hostess.
She determined who is notified and chose a venue. It’s her party.
I never said I had never seen sushi. I said I had never seen a sushi restaurant, you know a restaurant that just serves sushi? The local Chinese buffet has something they call sushi.
I continue to maintain that I have never seen a place that calls itself a “sushi restaurant” that serves nothing but sushi.
But a restaurant that serves nothing but sushi is still very specialized. Most oriental places that serve sushi serve it as one item in a broad menu. A sushi restaurant strikes me as being as specialized as a Dim sum restaurant, to keep it in the same ethnicity.
Neither have I, which is something most of the posters in this thread have commented on.
Yeah, that’s not actually the same ethnicity.
And the only thing specialized about Dim Sum is that it’s little pieces.
By God!, I think you may have just come up with the next great fusion cuisine restaurant idea!! That’s gold Jerry, gold!!
I dunno - I know full well that a lot of sushi is not raw, but in my house we use the phrase “chicken sushi” to make each other gag. 
I’m sure this is hyperbole. Hell, we even have Japanese restaurants that serve sushi out here in South Dakota.
:dubious: Yeah, no. I live in metro Detroit - which, last time I checked, is in Michigan and quite far from “the coasts” - and sushi is everywhere. It’s been mainstream here for at least 15 years now. I went to a sushi restaurant for a friend/coworker’s birthday in 1999; we all worked at a garage and I’d say mechanics are pretty dang blue collar and not generally interested in cutting edge food trends. There are literally dozens of sushi restaurants around me and yes, I mean restaurants whose actual focus is sushi. You’ve been able to buy sushi in Kroger’s for well over a decade, for crying out loud.
I think you haven’t seen any sushi restaurants because you’re not looking for them.
LOL. Truer words were never spoken. My dad’s a finicky eater - he’ll go hungry before he will eat lasagna, enchiladas, cashew chicken, or any of that exotic stuff. It makes him a pain in the ass to be around, honestly. SeaDragonTattoo, I’m glad you’ve gotten past it.
FWIW, sushi as it is commonly understood - sushi (rice) plus sashimi (fish) - is not a favorite of mine, either, but I can make do and have fun with my friends.
As others have said - it’s her birthday, she’s allowed to be a bit self-indulgent. The only real issue is how you feel about the person. If this is a co-worker or acquaintance, pass. If it’s a person very close to someone close to you, best friend’s sibling, in-law’s spouse, etc - tough it out.
If it’s a good friend of yours - you go and make the best of it. Good friends are scarce, and as Isaac Jaffe once said: “You make a gesture, celebrate an important date, show how you feel. For what you get in return, it’s a small price to pay. For a lifetime of friendship, it’s a steal.” For the record, a friend of mine loves sushi, and she smiles every single time she remembers the expression on my face the first time I had some 22 years ago - that alone is worth it.
There is even a sushi restaurant in far flung Yaounde, Cameroon- one of the least cosmopolitan places on the planet. The fish is flown in every morning on the Air France flight.
Don’t go if you don’t want to. It’s no big deal to miss a casual get together like a self-paid dinner. People who organize these things expect there to be some declines due to schedule conflicts, etc.
And no it’s not gauche to organize a casual birthday meet up with close friends. It’s not the birthday that matters, that’s just an excuse to get together. A party with hats and gifts would be over the top for an adult, but it’s totally normal for people- especially young single people- to try to get together with friends.
And refusing to try sushi is outlier behavior. People are not reacting to the Op disliking it. They are reacting to what appears to be strong feelings about something he has never tried, and to the factually incorrect characterization of sushi as highly specialized.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, pull over. ‘Outlierrn-san, you’re usual?’, is how it goes.