New Thing #23 - The Drunken Fish

Tonight I did something that I honestly never thought I would ever do....I ate sushi. To some people sushi is a normal thing, but until I moved to St. Louis, I was never exposed to it. And even though people have tried to get me to try it before, I never had any desire. So, I bit the bullet, and decided to give it a try. :)

I went to the Drunken Fish in the Central West End with my friends Betsy & Natalie, both of whom love sushi. It's a good thing I went with such seasoned pros too, because I had no idea what I was doing. And I can guarantee you I would have looked even more ridiculous trying to figure it out on my own!

We started the evening with appetizers of vegetable tempura and edamame (pronounced ed-uh-ma-may). The veggie tempura is basically pieces of veggies dipped in a light batter and fried. The mushrooms were delicious! I'm not really on the soy sauce bandwagon, so I didn't use much of it to dip my mushrooms in. Natalie, on the other hand, basically said that sushi, etc. is just a vehicle to eat the soy sauce. :) I think she's definitely on the soy sauce bandwagon. She might even be driving it! The edamame are lightly boiled soybean pods. Sounds weird, but good lord, that stuff is like crack! I thought maybe it was like other pea pods that you could eat the whole thing, but I would be wrong. You just suck out the beans in the middle. Good thing I waited for Natalie and Betsy to show me how it was done. I would have just popped the whole damn thing in my mouth. It took me a bit to get the first one going, but after that, Oh. My. Gosh. Scrumptious. I thought they brought a ton of them just for the three of us, but we inhaled them! I could snack on those every day.


The tray of edamame, partially eaten. That is salt that is sprinkled on top. Or crack. You be the judge. ;-)


I realize it kinda looks like I'm smoking the darn thing, but I assure you I'm not. I'm just trying to get at the wonderful deliciousness inside.


Our pile of edamame carcasses.


Betsy enjoying her edamame.

For the most part, Natalie and Betsy chose our sushi for us. I gave some guidance on what I do and don't like, but they picked what they thought I might like, along with stuff they like. We ordered five different rolls and they brought them all out in one big tray. (It seemed like a ton of food, but we ended up polishing off the entire thing.) We also ordered a side of chicken fried rice as a back up in case my sushi tasting went horribly wrong. (Natalie ended up taking the rest of it home to her husband.)


Our tray o' sushi.

The far left is the Spicy Salmon Roll, above that is the Spicy Tuna Roll, the orangish looking row down the center is the California Roll, the far right with the brown sauce is the Deep Fried Philly Roll, and the top corner is the Spider Roll. The weird orange blob at the top is ginger, and the green blob at the bottom is wasabi. I'll explain each in a bit as I tried them.


Plan B.

My first shot at sushi was the California Roll. It has crab meat (cooked) with cucumber, Japanese mayo, avocado, masago (no idea what that is) and sesame seeds. (All the sushi had rice as well.)


Look, I even mastered the chopsticks...well sort of.


Well, the cucumber taste was a bit overwhelming. I'm not a fan of cucumber, so that was a whole lotta flavor in my mouth I wasn't digging. I was trying not to laugh as well, hence the picture.

Next, I tried the Deep Fried Philly Roll. This has cooked salmon, cream cheese and avocado in it and was tempura fried with a delicious batter. It's also drizzled in eel sauce.


I will admit, I cut this in half before I ate it. I didn't want to have to spit the whole thing out if I didn't like it! (I think the eel sauce is what threw me.)


It wasn't bad though. Mainly I tasted the cream cheese, and since it was fried, the salmon was cooked. I liked this one. I wouldn't say I loved it, but I definitely didn't hate it. I even ate the other half!! Go me!

At this point, I've only eaten two pieces of sushi and a small bit of chicken fried rice. Natalie and Betsy, on the other hand, are going to town on our sushi tray. "You may be the slowest sushi eater I've ever seen." That comment came courtesy of Natalie. I couldn't help it, this was really new to me!

Betsy was chowin' on the wasabi as well, so much so that she said "Ooooh, I just cleared out my sinuses." Who needs medication when you can use wasabi to cure your cold!

There was a pile of shredded ginger on the tray which Natalie uses to cleanse her palette in between rolls. I decided to give a try (I like ginger chicken), but I think I grabbed a bit too much. Good gravy my eyes started watering. There's a whole lotta flavor in that little piece. I drained my water glass and had to ask for some more.

Next, I tried the Spider Roll, which was my choice. It was filled with soft shell crab (cooked), asparagus, masago and Japanese mayo.


This wasn't too bad either. It was warm which I think I liked better than them being cold. (Maybe it just tricked my brain into believing the meat was cooked). The only part I didn't like was the slightly overpowering taste of seaweed from the wrap. Oh yeah, and the claws sticking out of the end pieces was an odd sight.


But, I ate it like a champ!

Next up was the dreaded Spicy Salmon Roll. This included raw salmon, masago, spicy mayo and scallions. Have I mentioned that I prefer my meat cooked?! I was seriously dreading the raw fish.


Hence the goofy photo.


This one was a bit rough. There was a bit of stringiness (I'm guessing from the raw fish)...but the spice is what killed me. The more I chewed, the more spice I tasted. If I thought the ginger made my eyes water, I just had to try this one! Fortunately, it didn't taste fishy at all. Probably b/c my tongue was completely numb.


Water, stat!

I opted not to try the spicy tuna roll, which is exactly like the salmon roll. And since I had to request more water, I decided to just have another piece of the fried philly roll instead.


Natalie is a pro!

Well, I survived my first sushi experience. I ate five whole pieces!!! ;-) And none of it came back up, so I'd consider it a success. Now, would I eat it again? That's the question of the day. While I didn't hate it, I think it would take me quite awhile to get used to it. It's like nothing I've ever tasted before. I didn't have the guts to try sashimi, which is just the raw fish. That may never happen! We received coupons as we left for 15% of our next purchase, but I don't think I'll be using it any time soon!


Thanks to Betsy & Natalie for joining me!!!