Methinks somehow someone feigning a love for sushi took home the girl that you wanted to take home, although I can’t imagine the scenario where a food choice would play a role. And while I will allow there are probably large numbers of people who eat it to look hip, there are also equal amounts who actually enjoy it.
Maybe you meant to aim this diatribe at someone specific?
You know what really pisses me off. Gnocchi, God that stuff is bland and it sits in your stomach like library paste. It makes me seethe every time I see that annoying red headed guy on the food network going on and on about how good it is. You see those people in restaurants. I’ll have the gnocchi please. God what a bunch of assholes.
If it smells like fish, eat all you wish! 
My thought as well. There was a time when sushi was served in pretentious sushi bars and eaten by people because it was “cool” and “shocking” - when it was overpriced - and now its served in the company cafeteria (where it isn’t good, but for which I am thankful being gluten intolerant and sushi being something I can handle - the little bit if wheat in soy sauce doesn’t set me off. One of the last company lunches I went to was at a little sushi place (then again, the town my corporate headquarters is in has one burger bar, a bad Chinese place, and a sushi restaurant, your choices for lunch are pretty slim unless you want to drive into the bigger town.)
If you don’t care for sushi, don’t eat it. Pretty simple, really. If you don’t care for the atmosphere of your local pretentious sushi bar (and you are in a city big enough) find the local hole in the wall good sushi place where there are no drinks served in a hollowed out pineapple on the menu.
My eight year old eats sushi. Loves it.
So whatever happened to the OP?
If that were true, that would explain why there’s a sushi bar in Lachine called Hentai.
We go for sushi every chance we get and we’re the least trendy people in the industrialized world. The thesaurus gives the opposite of “trendy” as being my name.
This isn’t like bottled water or “energy drinks.” It’s basic food. Fish and rice with your choice of dressing. It doesn’t get much simpler.
Is octopus the specialty of the house?
AS for the OP, most have already said what I wanted to say. Dude, it’s just food, some people like it, you don’t. So what?
Be careful when you order the squid.
On preview: Damn you, Wile E!
I do remember really just “not getting” sushi.
I mean, it was tasty enough. The avocado and the shrimp tempura and all that… not bad. I just didn’t really go out of my way for it.
One day, I was coming home from work and thought to myself: go for sushi. So I went to one of the tastier restaurants to sit and have dinner. I sat up at the counter, which I’d never done, and ordered myself a plate.
As I waited and sipped at tea, the sushi chef handed me something I hadn’t asked for. It was a tiny bowl, maybe about three-quarters of a cup, and it had gently arranged greens and strips of white-and-pink fish of some kind. I remember what they looked like – could have been crab? – but I never knew what they were.
There was a perfect amount of a vinegary dressing. Each bit of green was neither bitter nor bland. The fish was absolutely perfect. Every single bite had so much subtle flavor; everything was just… just perfect.
That little salad, that non-sushi salad I never even asked for, got me to understand and appreciate the dinner I was about to have. It wasn’t just shrimp and rice and avocado and seaweed and whatever else. It was one perfect mouthful with an entire tiny meal inside.
Locally, the grocery-store sushi is actually pretty good. I wouldn’t drive by the really awesome places to get it, given the choice, but it’s a healthier and better choice than burger-and-fries.
Hey! I was just there two weeks ago–I didn’t see a McDonald’s, but I did have the freshest maguro sashimi ever! (If you know what I mean, and I think you do…)
It’s possible that the sashimi wasn’t at the right temp or that it was previously forzen. That makes the fish a rubbery texture and kills a lot of flavor.
The taste should be delicate but quite nuanced. Tuna, eel, and salmon don’t taste anything alike.
If you have to smother your sushi or sashimi in sauces in order to derive anyflavor, then you’ve probably been served drek made from frozen fish. Freezing and thawing causes discoloration and affects the taste and certainly the texture. Sashimi becomes nasty and tasteless.
There was an issue in Toronto awhile back during which health regulators wanted all restaurants to use forzen fish rather than fresh. Medical authorities agreed that serving non-frozen raw sushi poses no immediate health threats and there have been no disease or infectious outbreaks in this province from it.
Ontario quickly rescinded the law after public outcry forced them to look into the science a bit better and they found the regulation was kind of dumb. (They were worried about a parasiting disease, on e that has effected only three people in the last decade.)
I think there are some states that require the fish to be frozen. That may account for at least a portion of the “Gross! How do people eat this?!?” feelings some people have.
Otherwise, it can be acquired taste. A lot of people around here seems to like all their foods drenched in ketchup, mustard, curry, or some other crazy sauce, and SALT. So you have to get used to foods that have nuanced flavor if you don’t want to have to douse it in wasabi.
Seriously… you can get random rolls in Target, for god’s sake. Places do “spicy cajun rolls” down here with crawfish.
I’m all about unagi, myself. Mmm, smoked eel. There’s a place near LSU called Hello Sushi that does a “Godzilla Roll” with unagi and a sort of smoky sauce that is heaven.
Let me get this straight:
You condemn people who like sushi because you think they look down on people who don’t like sushi.
You look down on them and insult them because they like sushi and you don’t.
:dubious:
Heehee, reminds me of some regulars at my bar/restaurant. Mom, Pops, the 7 y.o. and their toddler. It’s great watching a three year old cheerfully eating tekka maki like it was Cheerios. When I was working we went every Friday around 7, and this young family was always there as well.
One Friday some ass broke into the couple’s car and took the mom’s purse (she had left it sitting on the seat, unfortunately). The head chef was out back having a cigarette and saw it. He took off running after the perp and got his license plate # and a description, scribbled down his arm in ink.
If there’s such a thing as a “sushi lifestyle”, I hope this is it.
There are some people that eat sushi mainly so they can be eating sushi. There seems to be a lot of those people 'round here because though most asian restaurant offer it on their menu, it runs the gamut from ridiculously over-priced to insultingly bad. Seriously, the best sushi I’ve found in the area is the pre-packaged store stuff (excuse: they do have actual sushi chefs that come in once a day, they will make stuff on request if you can catch them).
Seems like there have been a lot of strip-mall dive sushi bars opening lately, so maybe someone’s stepping in to fill the gap. Have to try them out eventually.
What a lame little OP that was. I have been enjoying sushi for like 25 years. I’ve had it in Japan on a number of occasions too. If anyone is ever in Santa Barbara, I can hook you up with a couple of great places that rival any I have been to anywhere in the world.
My thought exactly. I consider myself adventurous WRT food and pride myself that I’ll try anything once. However, I’ve never tried sushi and never will. The bottom line is that eating raw fish is an extraordinarily bad idea.
Sure, I’ll have my sushi with extra salmonella and a side of intestinal parasites, please. :rolleyes:
As others have pointed out, despite the popular conception that sushi means “raw fish”, it really doesn’t.
I eat sushi now and then and enjoy it, generally the supermarket kind, and I almost never eat raw fish.
I tend to pick out the varieties which have veggies*, fake crabmeat (which is cooked), cream cheese, and/or avacado.
(*I prefer the veggies NOT include cucumber.)
This is not due to fear of salmonella and intestinal parasites–recent headlines about pet food and other products from China being contaminated not withstanding, I feel pretty secure that my local supermarket does not want to put my health at risk.
Rather, it is because I don’t much like raw fish. I don’t like the texture. It isn’t rubbery, it’s just icky. I’ll admit to a pinch of “raw fish= icky” (and for that matter “raw meat=icky”) in my psyche, but not enough to keep me from trying any and all sushi.
Don’t want to eat sushi? Fine.
Aren’t real fond of cold rice, seaweed, and the rest of the ingredients? Fine.
But let’s not exagerate the health risks that those of us who do eat sushi take by eating sushi.
If the fish (or beef or poultry or whatever) isn’t cooked, I doubt there’s a whole lot the supermarket can do about the possible presence of undesirable elements in your food.
While I admit that the risk of getting sick from raw fish isn’t huge – I know people, including my SO, who eat it regularly and have done so for years without a problem – it only takes one bad batch to make you wish you were never born. The nurse in me just instinctively recoils from uncooked food.