Sushi 99: if it only meant percent

I could have busted into the joint like Chow Yun Fat, guns blazing! Take my word for it, dear readers, I could have; and I definitely would have if I had the foresight to know what the food was like. Even the Yun would have no qualms about putting the poor place and all its chaininess and corporate investment out of business. But who am I kidding? I've eaten at enough all-you-can eat sushi joints in this town to have a good amount of perspective. Or all-you-can-eat sushi joints at all for that matter. Who hasn't? Shoot. I'm willing to bet that even if I did have the perspective to predict what this place WAS like, just like the Fat (whom I assume could do that sort of thing) I wouldn't have even bothered. That's how the Chun rolls, and that's how I like to pretend I roll. But I won't point fingers, comrades. Not today; not this time. Not when I'm foolish enough to sacrifice quality for quantity in hopes that quality will persist, especially on my prodigal freeter budget. A budget I owe to the trials of graduate school, and the unexpected tribulations of having to stay there longer than even I had anticipated. And for that, as I did a year ago, I apologize, yet again for making you wait so long for yet another adventure in food land. And I apologize for any mediocrity that nestles snugly between the lines of my poor, poor blog, especially in this post. Blame it on the uninspiring food, and the supposed 3 year olds in the kitchen who were allowed to make it. But again, look who's pointing fingers: your dear narrator. But, how can I not? It's what I do; it's what you come for. Nothing in this life brings me more joy than helping you save a good dollar, and getting to eat in the process (you thought I was going to say 'and get a good meal.' Ridiculous).

I've been waiting diligently for a meal at Sushi 99. Since I found out I'd be stuck writing about the similarities between television cooking and hardcore pornography for another month; since my sister told me to wait for her so that we could go together, since I told myself that I would not go out to eat anywhere until I had the funds, until I had a job to justify my post-grad, post poverty, post-parasite single spending. I tried. At least I finished a small book about porn and food. I may be the only non-feminist to have accomplished such, but I'm not here to brag, I'm here to chew Sushi 99 out.
I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? I'm ruining the experience for you. Or am I? Consider this: you could stop reading right here. Right now. I'm giving you the option. This post won't be pretty. I do it for you after all, dear readers. Always, always for you. I swear I already said that (I know I did).

A gastronome shouldn't expect much from the appearance of a place. A gastronome should never let the appearance of the place be a qualifying factor for the legitimacy of its food, nor its quality. And yet, I fool myself every time by assuming that the looks of the place have some meaning for the quality of food offered. This I say as an aside because in my travels all over “food-dom” I find, or at least I stand by the belief that, hole-in-the-wall places have delicious food and that decked out places do not. This is not entirely true. Though I admit, outer appearance in a restaurant is certainly a symptom of the belief that a shiny place equals shiny food. To be honest, it goes both ways- a bad looking place could very well serve bad food, or good food for that matter; but for me, my support for the hole-in-the-wall eatery panders to the fantasy of sincere, genuine, authentic food, which in the town of Kitchener-Waterloo is another ruse for a roving, post-colonial palette; just a simple romance to make my adventures with food a little more magical. Alas, Sushi 99 couldn't cut it. When I saw that first plate of poorly packed nigiri-sushi I had a sneaking suspicion I was only kidding myself, yet again. Yes friends, the uniformed black and white servers and the all in black in-house manager confidently striding through the isles to make sure everyone was fed, wasn't enough to make me feel that everyone was working to their fullest potential. Nor did the deep browns of the walls' trims and the proverbial colour of red paneling (to represent whatever it is that is Asian nowadays) do anything to change my mind. When I got that first morsel all I thought was, Weezee, you bastard. You've been tricked again. Tricked by yet another corporate investment, tricked by a place that reeks of franchise, not mirin and barley tea (though they did serve barley tea, not genmaicha which is particular to almost all "Japanese" restaurants in town). Tricked by a ceiling with planks of wood that careen to represent perhaps the shape of a caricatured fish or the character of those famous Shinto shrines known as torii, believed to mark the separation between the sacred and the profane. If that were the case, everything under the ceiling must have been profane, because there was nothing sacred about the food I ate. No aesthetic appeal, no effort in preparation, not even a dab of wasabi between raw fish and packed rice, which I'm confident wasn't cooked, discovered after noticing what looked like cracks in between grains, which in my experience of cooking rice professionally is a huge indicator that: no, rice is not cooked.

If you're after any kind of authenticity, dear readers, you won't find it at Sushi 99, though I can't say that they claim to serve any kind of genuine Japanese food, or be Japanese food for that matter. And if I may digress, as I so often do: it shouldn't matter who the people are. That there were no Japanese people in the kitchen making my sushi didn't matter. That I eavesdropped on the Mandarin conversation of boss and employee says nothing about the quality of the food, though it may say something about Sushi 99's intentions of hiding behind particular conventions in order to appeal to an eating audience- an ignorant eating audience who is idiotic enough to see Asians behind a counter taking fish from a pile of pre-sliced tuna and stacking it onto a bed of shitty rice and believing they are sushi chefs.

Please. Let's not kid ourselves.

I certainly didn't. Especially when I saw how unevenly my rolls were cut. Which brings me to my point: what makes my food matter is the skill behind it. No chefs or cooks, or sushi savants, or whatever, were even qualified to cut a roll, let alone roll it. It was nothing more than an assembly line, which in sushi places in Japan- shoot, even Vancouver- at least employ qualified sushi chefs. I couldn't help but think how much Sushi 99 hid behind its appearance; its entire construction being nothing more than a compromise for taste or passionately prepared food. It seems that in this place of all-you-can-eat sushi, there was nothing more than cooking complacency, a need to get orders to tables on a Friday afternoon and an even bigger need to rush people out in order to make room for more people and profit. I didn't think it was worth it, but certainly the huge teenage crowd that stuffed the joint did. I can't blame them. Cheap food and even cheaper palettes. I recall a young girl raving about her lunch next to me. Reach for the stars, kid. Maybe read a little Hume when you have the time, too. See what it means to have a little taste. Or not, what do I care? I'm pretty sour by this point in the entry anyway.

In retrospect, my memory seems a little relentless. After all, Sushi 99 is a new restaurant and it is another all you can eat food chain, with lucky cats and a big dining room and cheap prices. On a Friday afternoon it only makes sense that the food seem a little lacking in some areas, especially since there appeared to be no genuine chefdom going on anywhere near the kitchen. Now, I couldn't see inside the kitchen, but judging by the quality of the cooked foods I received I'm willing to bet guidance was devoid even in that of most coveted food spaces. It's difficult to redeem any of this experience. Sure, my lunch cost 13.99 (12.99 on any other day of the week; but, it was Friday, and for some reason that warrants charging more) and I received all I could eat (for 1.5 hours, which servers neglected to tell me about, and which I luckily read on the lunch menu by chance, so I really couldn't eat all I could eat- I do wonder what they would have done if I did order past my time limit?), but that hardly makes up for the food I wasn't nearly satisfied with. The alleged Japanese pancakes- fried eel fried in a batter in the shape of a pancake was chewy and raw, seaweed salad (to my usual dismay) was nothing but some seaweed topping a filler of iceberg lettuce, and the nigiri sushi didn't even hold against the poorly packed oblong rice, which I assume happened throughout my meal for one of two reasons: no wasabi (which is a stretch), or, that the rice wasn't cooked properly. But it was Friday, right? So, I should go easy on the place. Easy on the place. Easy. Tempura’d vegetables were too thick and thus not crispy and firm, but semi cooked when coming to the table. Dumplings were soft, too. Other kitchen appetizers such as spring onions wrapped in beef were chewy and the onions burnt, eggplant cut awkwardly and difficult- no, frustrating- to handle with chopsticks; and the vegetable udon was too overpowering to finish, its broth tasting of bad kelp and really fishy stock. As for actual sushi rolls, the poster child of the all-you-can-eat sushi joint, were poor all around. Not only did they exude sloppy preparation and hold, but they thoroughly lacked a good amount of rice, so much so that one could easily see the hue of seaweed beyond the rice when picking up the roll; and if that wasn't bad enough, sometimes the rice stuck to the serving place pulling off of the seaweed wrapped portions themselves.

	Poorly cut, poorly rolled.

Now I know for a fact that Japanese food prides itself on its aesthetic construction, so much so that larger food portions are usually compromised in order to express this dynamic, and obviously justify the price of Japanese food. That's why I have a love hate relationship with bento lunches.

Delicious food
so much money,
never enough to eat.

Did I just write a haiku? Anyway, it seems Sushi 99 capitalized on that idea, or at least on the part of Japanese cuisine that seems to charge a lot for so little. Sure, it was all I could eat, but not when I'm rushed, and not when my sushi looks like sushi first did when it was discovered by some old Japanese woman who hid her rice from thieves in a bird's nest which later brought bits of fish back thus inventing the dish (mere folky speculation).

	Spring onions wrapped in beef were chewy and the onions burnt.

I can only think of one thing on the menu that warranted some attention, and that was the dessert of deep fried ice cream and deep fried bananas. Needless to say, I expected a hardy batter to surround both, but what I got was a weak scoop engulfed by an even weaker, mushier tempura and a half of a quarter (try to imagine that) of a banana deep fried in the same batter, drizzled with chocolate sauce. Another disappointment, especially when so many restaurants in this town offer the same dessert.
Up until the end of the meal, service was pretty punctual. Actually, too punctual (it did forget an order of soup, but hey, that's the nature of the all-you-can eat beast, I reckon). Some would call it over-service. I would call it over-service. I can understand the need to clear tables and make room for more food, but I draw the line when I can't hold a conversation with my company for more than five minutes before random hands (manager's included, which was very uncomfortable) dive down in between us to collect our plates. I did not take this as one of two possibilities; they simply wanted us to eat and get out, not to enjoy ourselves and the experience of what looks like a fine sushi establishment; not to be bogged down with dirty dishes at our table. Again. Please. I'm nothing if not a gentleman. My comrade and I ate with a good deal of grace. This type of service was probably the most irritating I've ever experienced. I didn't tip, because I knew I wasn't coming back.

Alas, dear readers, did I break your hearts? Sushi 99 certainly broke mine. Fear not, there is a world elsewhere, so Shakespeare says. And there are definitely many times of day to eat. Perhaps you could try Sushi 99 on a Monday at lunch, or a Thursday at night and tell me how it goes. Until then, eat well. Oh, and I've missed you.

Bill (without tip): 16.09.

Sushi 99
(519) 725-7799
36 Northfield Dr East
Waterloo, ON N2L 6A1

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