EEbEE ate Sushi!!!

Milestone reached, I have FINALLY plucked up enough courage to eat some sushi. Okay, okay so I was quite conservative with my first sushi experience. You see I have been told that people either LOVE or HAATE sushi. So I was convinced by Rin, the Afrikaaner, to eat sushi on condition that she would eat my barf if I threw up (well not quite… but that’s what I imagined as incentive to go for it). I had something called an avocado Maki…

Avocado Maki: A bit of Avo surrounded by gooey rice and wrapped in some seaweed

So there I was, patiently waiting for my order of humble maki, while my ‘sushi expert’ officemates were ordering California pies and… geez I forget the names… one was called a handjob (kind of like a seaweed ice-cream cone filled with raw salmon, shrimp, rice and cucumber). Ummm… the other one I remember was kind of like a maki but instead of the rice being wrapped in weeds it was wrapped in some raw salmon topped with a lump of what appeared to be mayonnaise with fish egg sprinkles…?

I was told that the sushi can be pretty boring so you have to dip it in stuff to make it taste better.

>Enter magic condiments<

Soy sauce was provided in a quaint little bucket,

Pink ginger shavings in another little bucket,

and finally (the hero of the night) wasabi in the final bucket.

After some more waiting and random conversations about male virility and the point of mascara (which I will save for another post) our sushi arrived! There, underneath an upside-down goldfish bowl were three little maki, staring at me with their imaginary eyes. “Have pity sir! Don’t eat us, we’re too intricate and cute to be eaten” they said. They were about to break into song and dance before I stabbed them with a chopstick and ate them (geez I’m watching way too much Kappa Mikey…). Well actually I used the chopstick properly (albeit slowly) to pick up a maki and rub it’s bum in soy before putting ginger bits on its face and putting the whole thing in my mouth. I chewed quite tentatively until I got over the texture (the awful, AWFUL texture) and started appreciating the taste. Avo maki was surprisingly good.

The second little maki looked at me in despair. Judging from my reaction after eating his brother he knew the end was in sight. “I hope you get indigestion you $o@B!!!” he muttered as I brought the chopsticks closer to my mouth. His bum was dipped in a wasabi flavoured soy sauce which I told my friend tasted interesting (but really just tasted the same as the first one…). Chew, chew, swallow & verdict = So so…

The final little maki had tears in his eyes for he knew, by process of elimination, that his bottom would be dipped in wasabi paste stuff before being eaten. My friend described wasabi as “hollow tasting mustard” which I thought was fine, I like mustard and the wasabi soy sauce was pretty boring. So I smeered a teaspoon of wasabi onto the makis face (it wouldn’t dip…wasabi isn’t sticky enough) only to be greeted with questioning and shocked stares from my companions.

You know you have overdone it when your friends start placing bets at the tableside… so I quickly scraped off some of the green paste. “it’s still a lot EEbEE, but you should be fine…” was all I needed. I put the last maki in my mouth…

Chew

Chew

Chew

Wait

…

“this isn’t bad, what’s the big de…”

…Silence…

“AAAARGH My Nose! It’s on fire!!!! EEEEEEEEK! My eyeballs! They burn! MAKE THE BURNING GO AWAY! IT REALLY HURTS”

(approximately 3 seconds later)

Swallow. Back to normal.

I was quite impressed that the sensation was so intense but also so very short. If you eat a birds-eye-chilli for example, your mouth, nose and ass burn simultaneously for up to 3 hours. The wasabi packed as much (if not more) punch but only lasted 3 seconds… amazing stuff.

I have decided that I may go back for more sushi I hear they make something called an Ebi roll…