Maybe you need to concede that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I can’t conceive of any restaurant featuring a generic “sushi” item on the menu. That’s like finding “sandwich” or “casserole” on a menu. It. Just. Does. Not. Compute.
To say it another way, “sushi” isn’t a specific type of food. It’s a broad category of food. Do you think a sub/sandwich shop is "highly specialized? If that’s an insane notion to you, then I hope you can understand why we’re collectively rolling our eyes at you.
I’m picking arbitrary cities and towns in Michigan, and any city you would have heard of has plenty of sushi joints.
Grand Rapids: 8 places with “sushi” in their name, and a few others that call themselves “sushi bars” in their description.
Flint: 1 with “sushi” in the name, and 2 others that advertise as sushi bars
East Lansing: 11 with the word in the name, plus a couple others without
Kalamazoo:4
Saginaw: 2 in the name, couple others
Even the Yoop has a sushi place in Marquette, Michigan.
And I’m not even going to look in Ann Arbor, where it’ll be no surprise there’s a bunch of sushi joints.
So, if this is what you mean by “a few select places,” then we just have a different definition of that. Sushi is fairly ubiquitous in this day and age.
The OP claimed that the friend was going to have birthday dinner at a place that pretty much only serves sushi.
Most of us think that is unusual. So if you are saying it’s unusual, you do not disagree with most posters; you disagree with the OP.
If on the other hand, you are saying that it’s usual for there to be a restaurant with “sushi” in the name that specializes in sushi, then you are wrong.
And conflating Japanese and Chinese cuisines and people is not cool.
They certainly exist. An acquaintance of mine (an American whose ex was Japanese) told me that around here, sushi restaurants called “Mt. Fuji” or “Katana” or some other random Japanese phrase will likely be run by Koreans, while the Japanese-owned ones will simply be called “Sushi <chef’s name>.” I can’t say whether he was right, but it sounded plausible.
Being asked to attend a birthday party of a friend or acquaintance at a restaurant that one does not find appealing is not inconsiderate, and is acceptable.
There are some in Hawaii, and they do indeed serve only sushi.
I think what you find locally depends on the size of your local Asian population. My observation is that in areas where there is a high Asian population, the restaurants are more specialized and tend to not encompass multiple Asian cuisines. There will be Japanese restaurants, but also restaurants that serve only Japanese curry, only sushi, only yakitori, only teppanyaki, etc. Same for Chinese restaurants or Korean restaurants-- there will be Chinese restaurants and Korean restaurants, but also only Chinese dim sum restaurants, only Chinese BBQ restaurants, only Korean BBQ restaurants, and so on. The high Asian population allows both generic and specialized restaurants to stay in business. The perception that a place that does multiple cuisines can’t possibly do either one better than a single-cuisine restaurant will slow business to multiple-cuisine places.
The smaller the local Asian population, it seems, the more generically Asian the menu gets. They don’t specialize in only Japanese, or only Chinese; instead, it’s a total Asian free-for-all. They’ll serve fried rice AND sushi AND dim sum AND kal bi. The local population probably isn’t going to be as discriminating, and the restaurant can probably attract more customers by having multiple cuisines rather than just Japanese or Chinese food.
Did everyone jumping all over the sushi aspect miss this? She’s not just picking her favorite restaurant. She’s “inviting” people to eat at home and then just “be there.” I’m sorry, but that is inconsiderate. If you care enough to actually mention those people, you need to do something to accommodate them. You don’t just “invite” them to come anyways.
She gets to pick the restaurant, but she should not be expecting people to come if they don’t like the venue. That’s the trade-off. If they choose to eat at home and come anyway, that’s something they decide on their own, not something they should be “invited” to do.
And, yes, I put the quotes around “invited” because I don’t see it as an actual invitation. You can’t invite someone to eat at home, and you don’t invite someone to come to something but not partake.
I’d feel differently if, say, she was also offering cake or had an additional part of the party elsewhere for people who will not like her choice of restaurant. That’s the considerate way to accommodate others, not telling them to eat at home.
If they don’t want to come, they don’t have to. No one is forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.
For all the OP knows, there WILL be cake. They don’t say because the whole notion of sushi has dominated her/his consciousness to the exclusion of all common sense and reason.
We hired a new cook a few weeks ago. In our kitchen are posters showing the Vietnamese and English names of a lot of foods, including “sushi.” Our new cook is going to see if she can find out how to make it. I do hope she succeeds.
I have actually seen sushi restaurants with “Sushi” in their name that do serve *only *sushi, and nothing else, but that’s because I live in Manhattan and these are $150 a head omakase places. I doubt that’s the kinda place the OP has in mind.
