My First Sushi

Last week, I had my first sushi.

While Andrea and I were out of town for our son's graduation from college, we took him and two of his friends out to lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Japan Inn. 

Located in a depressingly nondescript strip mall in Greenville, inside it was all dark wood and potted plants that one might expect from a standard issue Japanese restaurant.

I've had Japanese food before but I've never had sushi.  But the item I selected included sushi.

It was a lunch special known as a Bento Box which includes a main entree (I chose Beef Teriyaki) served with fried rice, California Roll, crab rangoon and soup or salad.

I opted for salad which reminded me of the salads we had at home when I was a kid. When I was a mere child Dave-El, salad was lettuce with salad dressing, usually Thousand Island or French. And that was it. No tomatoes, cut up cucumber or cheese or diced up egg or croutons or any of the other fiddlybits one might expect in a salad. 

Just lettuce and dressing. 

Which is what Japan Inn had for salad and quite frankly, that's OK with me. Sometimes I think restaurants make salads way more complicated than they need to be.

But this is not about a throwback to my childhood and the simplest salad ever. 

This is my first encounter with sushi. 

To be honest, I ordered this thing without knowing what a California Roll or crab rangoon  is.  

Turns out a California roll is sushi made with rice, cucumber, crab meat or imitation crab, and avocado.

So how was my first encounter with sushi.  Well, it was... OK.

I did not hate it but I do not see what the fuss is all about. 

I see people on TV saying "I just LOVE some sushi" but it's just... OK.   

Crab Rangoon (or as it was spelled on the Japan Inn menu, "Krab Rangoon") is a wonton wrapper filled with cream cheese, crab meat or imitation crab meat, scallions and garlic.   

Again, it was...  OK. More of a culinary experience than the sushi and Dean said he loves Rangoon which is fine and all but for me, it was just...  OK.  

By the way, including tip, I laid out more than $100 for lunch. But how often do we celebrate our son graduating from college?

When I graduated from college, my parents took me out to Wendy's.  Hardee's was our regular fast food hook up.  Wendy's was for when we wanted to be fancy.  

So it was a day of milestones: Dean graduating from college and me eating sushi for the first time.