see, it looks so good
so. i tried sushi for the first time the other day. having been vegetarian for many years and lately starting to eat a bit of fish, i was very excited about trying it.
after a good but ordinary teriyaki salmon starter (actually very good in itself, but i'm not a big fan of cooked salmon), we had miso soup. meh. tasted like water, salt and liquid smoke. BORING. not very good either.
then the actual sushi.
some unidentifiable maki, might have been tuna, that really can't be described in any other way than BLAND. tasteless. completely lacking any kind of flavor. and, frankly, i found the squishyness of the fish to be kind of gross. wtf? i think it was because it didn't taste like anything, so it felt like eating something weird and alien.
the nigiri sushi was equally bland. i liked the consistency better with the fish on top of the rice (rather than the maki i'm-eating-eyeballs consistency with the fish in the center). we had salmon, tuna, cooked shrimp, red clam and some kind of white fish, and they ALL TASTED THE GOD DAMN SAME, except for the red clam, which was my favorite, and the shrimp, which tasted... vaguely shrimpy. except, you know, bland. argh. it just tasted like nothing. not the fish. not the rice. you know how really cold food has no flavor? like that. except i don't remember it as being very cold, so i don't know if that had anything to do with it. (i suppose raw fish must be kept cold. but. you know. is it supposed to be like that?)
and i found both the soy sauce and the pickled ginger way too sweet. the sweetness would probably have been good if it had been balanced by some other flavor, but as the ONLY favor there, it got pretty old very quick.
in the end the whole thing was just sweet and squishy and bland and sickening. i actually couldn't finish it. i always imagined sushi to taste sort of "fresh", you know? this was the exact opposite.
I AM DISAPPOINTED. i love love LOVE "raw-ish" fish like cold smoked salmon or mackerel, and before going veggie i used to love raw meat, so the rawness isn't a problem. i had always imagined that i'd like sushi. i was totally looking forward to eating it. meh.
i'm definately trying it again, but in the meantime:
tell me about sushi. do you like it? what kind of sushi do you like? describe what you like about it.