Yesterday was a rather untraditional eating day. I had the American breakfast in the hotel. When you've got a full day of meetings, you just can't eat fish and nato beans for breakfast. Lunch was at a really good restaurant. I had pork tempura with rice. The meat was a little fatty, but when you deep-fry something it's hard to go that wrong. Dinner was very unconventional: a pork knuckle with cabbage. The meat itself was pretty good, although it was extremely fatty.
American breakfast again today. For lunch I ate at the cafeteria and had a really good noodle bowl with a very spicy broth.
The highlight was dinner today, when we went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. These restaurants are really fun because you can try a ton of different kinds of sushi, and it's effectively all-you-can-eat. You just grab whatever you want as it goes by on the conveyor belt and then they just count how many plates you have at the end and charge you accordingly. I ate about twice as much as anyone else, at 17 plates. A couple of those were cake, but I also had some bacon sushi, as well as prosciutto sushi. All topped off with an Asahi beer.
But the badge of honor came at the end of the meal, when I finally tackled a sushi obstacle I've avoided for years: sea urchin roe, or uni. Unbeknownst to me until I just looked it up on the Internet, the sushi is actually made from the gonads of the sea urchin.
Yummy.
Let me just say that I'm cool with respecting other cultures and accepting other's viewpoints. But there is no way anyone can think this stuff is good.
First, there was the seaweed wrap. I know, I know, normally seaweed wrap is fine. But given the other flavors that accompanied it, it didn't really help things. Then there was the cucumber. I'm not a big fan of the cuce, but it was part of the dish, so I left it on there.
Then there was the uni (or "urchin 'nads") itself. My experience is that the three important parts of food are taste, texture, and appearance. This stuff is a solid zero for three. It looks like brown mustard, or possibly a dirty diaper after the baby's been eating brown mustard. It has the texture of watered down mustard. And it has the flavor of FREAKIN' URCHIN GENITALS. The dish came with two pieces, so let's just say I only ate half the dish. And the girl sitting across the table was getting ready to dodge sixteen plates worth of spew.
But, I can now die happy knowing that I've climbed the Mount Everest that is sea urchin roe. More tomorrow...
2 comments:
Yeah, that's definitely the face of a guy forcing himself to eat some urchin 'nads.
Also, way to turn me off from trying Any. Sushi. Ever.
i c ... by looking at the numbers of plates you consumed, you are DEFINATELY eating more than a typical japanese. that would cause you to gain weight.
as for uni, it is one of the most delicious food that exist on earth. GOD is good to give us such delicate meat.
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