Underwater and Undercooked Rant

I DECLARE: As of last night, I have eaten at my very last sushi restaurant. I don’t eat sushi. I don’t like the taste of almost all fish. It is gag-a-rif-ic to me for three major reasons: temperature, texture, and the haunting scent/taste of sea murder. It reminds me of being nearly drowned to death and emotionally abused at the Grosse Ile Yacht Club and also I am severely allergic. A few of these things are true. It doesn’t matter. I hate seaweed just as much. I can’t even smell the side of a toy boat without yacking and I don’t understand ingesting something that smells like the main ingredient of  phrase spoken when things turn bad (something is fishy here).

I have several friends that hate red meat and a couple that claim to have caught gluten intolerance in the past food-allergy-centric decade. Fine, fine. Different strokes. They too have a few blacklisted menu items, but I am certain that they don’t have to deal with the cultural backlash and social awkwardness that comes from not eating sushi. People (a term I use to cover – um – people of the eastern and western and southern United States) simply cannot get over it. I don’t know if it is their own self-doubt or WWII/Internment camp guilt (second mention this week) or what, but I have had an easier time smoking a cigarette outside of a Gilda’s club (true) than I have just ordering some soup at a Japanese restaurant while they order up their overpriced and undercooked chunks of shit-swimming fish flesh.

In the past I have gone along with my friends to sushi places because they were visiting from out-of-town or severely craving sushi or whatever, and I have said “I don’t eat sushi, I’ll just get soup or beer or some other kind of belly wash – you just enjoy yourself.” But it’s not going to happen anymore because the enjoyment never happens – it is certain that, after being seated, the topic of how I don’t eat sushi will be brought up – not by me, but by the sushi eater. And all it ever does is highlight our differences in taste and it makes everything suspect and unfun.

I can eat pepperoni pizza in front of a vegetarian, what is so hard about enjoying sushi without me eating it? I personally don’t wonder about things like, “how can you NOT like this?!!” (a common statement made by diners choking on seaweed). I know that like snowflakes and thumbprints, we all are different. And just like the fact that I can eat brussel sprouts and olives while you gag, I don’t eat or enjoy the same raw sea beasts that brighten your day. More importantly, I don’t equate your lack of taste for red meat with the typical self-loathing of guilty over-educated Americans (ok, maybe I do…)

What IS this thing about equating cuisine taste with culture? Why do we only selectively insist on false authenticity? If you can eat with chopsticks are you cultured? I remember a story about a friend of a friend that was appalled that a certain Thai restaurant didn’t provide chopsticks (even though forks are totally a-ok in Thailand). Last night I heard the table of polo-shirted southern men joke with the asian waitress (at the sushi restaurant) about how they were just going to order chicken fingers and honey mustard sauce – signifying that they were not typical low-brow uncultured customers. Later when the check came they joked with her that they would be paying with food stamps. How hilarious. I’ll take a quiet alcoholic or near-dead anorexic over an outspoken sushi eater* any day.

* Tested truth: Soy Chai Latte drinkers are actually the most obnoxious people in the western hemisphere. I worked at starbucks. I can confirm this. People that like caramel are generally nice.