Something Fishy

I was talking to my brother on the phone today. This is not too uncommon. We tend to call one another when we're bored on the road. I know. It's not the safest thing to do. On the other hand, being bored doesn't seem all that safe either. He mentioned that he was just about to head to a place to eat sushi.

I knew a place that some of my coworkers like to eat called Hakuba. We also like to go to Kimo Sushi. It's hard to say whether either place is super authentic, but that's the way Asian food is in the U.S. There's some nod made to making it more palatable to Americans, or at least, an Asian's perception of what is palatable to American.

Even sushi places that don't create sushi with names like Boston roll, spider roll, Vegas roll, and all other manners of rolls that most likely never graced a serious Japanese sushi place often have California rolls, which has to be something like the chop suey of Japanese food. It's vegetarian. It's got avocado. It's a California roll.

Sushi became popular in the 80s, most famously associated with yuppies, the name given to young upwardly mobile professionals. These were the new rich, the so-called bohemian bourgeouis. Sushi seemed a way for the newly wealthy to flaunt their wealth. It involved something exotic (Japanese), it cost money, and required a certain kind of bravery to eat it for those who were used to having their food cooked.

Sushi is also quite a different experience. To eat the best sushi usually means eating the fish freshly killed, often minutes before. Most American sushi places aren't that authentic, but the fish still has to be pretty fresh. If the fish is going bad, not only will it make you sick, it will begin to smell.

Americans that don't like sushi often complain not only that it's raw, but that it's flavorless too. Those who like sushi could point to a more enlightened approach to eating, one that emphasizes visual appearance and texture over taste. That kind of Zen thought made those who eat sushi seem positively academic. Of course, you could punch up the blandness with a dash of wasabi and soy and pickled ginger.

I ate sushi for the first time as I was about to graduate from Cornell, some 15 years ago. A restaurant, called Kayuga, meant to look Japanese, but really a stylized spelling of Cayuga, a nearby lake, with Native American roots for its name. Since then, I've eaten sushi on and off. It's not so convenient to find sushi where I live, though there are a few offerings where I work.

I was searching for Hakuba. A while ago, we attempted to eat there, but it was closed due to a fire. Another restaurant owner was out soliciting people to try his food. He ran another Asian place, and it seemed decent enough.

Today, I decided to find Hakuba. It's on a road called Kentlands off of Great Seneca Highway. The problem is how it comes off this highway. Go left, and it's called Kentlands. Go right and it's called Orchard Ridge. That's terribly confusing, and rather infuriating.

I drove and drove and drove, waiting to see this road, not realizing I was miles and miles beyond it. The only solace was that I found the Amish market. Here, the Amish run a meat market, a crafts market, and freshly baked pastries. They seem to use electricity for business. Sad to say, the only knowledge I have about the Amish comes from the film Witness. If that film did anything, it put the Amish firm in the nation's psyche.

Without that film, would there have been a Kingpin? Would Weird Al have made a parody of Gansta's Paradise called Amish Paradise?

Who's in Witness? There's Kelly McGillis who then went on to make Top Gun. There's Danny Glover. There's Alexander Godunov, the Russian ballet dancer, who plays Amish in an unusual piece of casting. There's Lukas Haas who is still acting. He's recently playing "The Pin" in Brick, the kingpin of the teen film noir, who's mother is as wholesome (and naive) as apple pie.

After trekking that far, I turned around, low on gas, and eventually found Kentlands, then had sushi. I ended up getting something that really amounts to pieces of raw fish. It wasn't rolls. It wasn't sashimi. Just pieces of raw fish. That was different.

Then, just as I was about to head back, I noticed a shop called "Crepes a Go-Go" where they make crepes. It's a bit unusual to find a crepe shop anywhere, so I had to go and get a crepe. There are "savory" crepes (savory, in this context, appears to mean "not sweet" and usually contrasts with something that is sweet). They have sweet crepes mostly filled with fruit and nutella. My housemate would drool over the thought of eating here. I got a crepe with spinach, cheese, and an egg.

The crepe itself is made on a large circular flat plate of steel. The guy pours the batter on top of this plate, then uses what appears to be a mini-rake, though rather than have prongs at the end, it is flat, almost like a mop, except it's all wood. He would spin his hand, in a circular fashion making the crepe larger and larger. When it was as large as it was going to be, he would quickly spin the excess batter over the top so that it was clumped in any one spot. It was much like a painter trying to leave an even coat.

Seconds later, he'd take something that looked a bit like a pastry knife, the kind used for spreading icing on a cake, and pried the crepe off, flipped it over, and let it sit a few more seconds, then folded it in half, and moved it in the next plate over, where it would sit being warmed. He had three warming plates. One to do the cooking of the crepes, two others to place his crepes once made.

He could put up to four crepes on the remaining two, since they were folded in half.

I took my crepe and left, pumped gas, and headed back to do a little work.

Now, I bloggeth about this food. Ah, why am I so beholden to food?