Congee, You're My Baby: Abandon Ship ***SHUTDOWN

It’s that time of year again. When grizzly winter days eliminate any perspective I have about the food of food reviews past. That’s right. I admit it. Sometimes, I make foolish comestible choices. Sometimes, my culinary stirrings can betray me. As I write this, I can still taste the displeasure on my palate, like some unappetizing apparition (weird, right?). My anger may very well be a projection of my own anger at myself for having chosen such a disenchanting place that had such disenchanting food, which would imply that it was actually the food, and not myself that made me, in retrospect, so angry. Did I just melt your brains? It may very well be for the best, because here comes, as I regretfully write, yet another ‘dooming epitaph.’

Let me wax poetic, dear readers. Something has to entertain you, because it certainly will not be the food. Harsh snowfall produces in me a nostalgic yearning for the Japanese food I remember having many times in my past. In retrospect, however, I think whatever perception I’ve had was only vividly dreamt of through a screen, having been forced to watch a multitude of culinary shows about Japanese noodles- soba, udon, ramen- by that kid from Hong Kong. I’ve never had such bowls in this city. And yet, again, the very screen I type this on, like the television we all use for fantasy, served the very same purpose.

But let’s not blame the internet for my follies. I was foolish enough to fall victim to my own archipelagic cravings, cravings that might forever play out until I’m on a boat, or learning noodle mastery on the island of Okinawa. Cravings, I think, after my most recent culinary adventure, I have finally learned to control.

Sushi Boat’s online menu looked promising, and I assumed I could avoid any trouble if I saw an affordable meal option. That was enough to clinch any prejudgments about the city’s newest sushi place. There were some appealing options. Aside from a menu that optioned pretty inexpensive combo choices that could easily be split between two diners who wanted to try different things, there were some unexampled dishes I hadn’t seen and thought worth a gastronomical shot: like tofu salad, egg corn soup, and Sunomono: glass noodle dishes with varied ingredients tossed with a styled vinaigrette.


	Oh, hi Mark!

But it was when I walked through its doors that I was nagged by the strange feeling that I had been there before. I was jaded. Black and red walls, dim lighting, inappropriate, but clearly unintentional ornaments (like wall stencils of angel fish). It was another sushi place catering to the most alien of culinary tourists. A phantasmagoria of what the Japanese dining space is thought to be like. What’s worse? It was all-you-can-eat. This became a disheartening realization when I was seated and faced with familiar lists of paper awaiting pencils and numbers. I asked for the menu, hoping that what I saw on the restaurant’s mounted plasma screen was actually edible choices and not yet another fantasy screen out to trick customers into believing what was shown was what was served. So I cried, I prayed, and I begged- that’s a small music allusion for you all- for a menu that wasn’t all-you-can-eat, and I was happily obliged.

Unfortunately, what I was looking to eat on the regular menu was also offered on the all-you-can-eat menu. Guilt ridden, I accepted it, and picked up my pencil. While waiting, I was bombarded by yet another screen. A tablet was set down in front of me with even more photos of what was on the menu. I was becoming more and more leery. Could the food actually speak for itself, rather than depending on so many screens? I hoped I was wrong. I didn’t want to disavow Japanese restaurants altogether in this town, but I was prepared to do it.


	Original.

First, I ordered what I initially intended to: the Sunomono, or ‘vinegared things,’ with mixed seafood. An outdated dessert goblet was placed in front of me, cradling a batch of noodles (not glass like the menu said) swimming in a sweet, overbearingly pungent vinegar and topped with strips of crab and a tough rubbery snapper. The vinegar was offensive, the crab imbued with the chemical quality of the plastic it was freeze dried in. Next, my beef udon soup was a mess of overcooked noodles, tough beef bits and a salty broth with a smokey undertow that I hoped was imbued by the tuna flakes traditionally used to make it.


	I've taken better photos. Then again, I've been to better places.

Is there a silver lining to any of this? I’m sure the menu’s not all that bad, there are a few mentionables: like the white tuna sushi, a smooth textured fish that would have otherwise felt great creamed by my tongue if not for an eerie warmth that tailgated it. And the short ribs, though somewhat fatty, offered more meat on their bones than I had seen at other places. I did enjoy the capelin; a deep fried salty whole smelt- that’s a tiny little fish for those of you that don’t know. But this is as tender as I get. My tofu salad was a mere sprinkling of deep fried curd on iceburg lettuce. Chewy and fetid, the outer crust did nothing to compliment its silken interior, nor the entire dish. I couldn’t understand why it existed as an option at all. Tempura was lackluster, and if I remember anything about it at all, it was the unevenly cooked batter across the terrain of some pieces. My sushi pizza was the worst I’ve had. Labelled as ‘rainbow’ it was nothing more than a thin rice base with even thinner slices of fish, and shrimp so thin it looked shredded. Aside from a saturated, oily crust with odd pebbly bits of deep fried rice, it was also drizzled with a sauce that was spicy, sweet, and overbearing. More than anything, I wanted to eat what the cooks on break were eating because, I assumed, it wasn’t anything like what was on the menu, and probably made with more effort and care. I was tired of trying to make sense of the food, like what makes something called a ‘Thai roll’ Thai? Was it the pickled radish? I doubt it. There were no conventional Thai flavours; it tasted too similar to everything else. Too sweet, too salty, too sour.

Sushi Boat was sinking faster than Costa Concordia (too soon?), and I only wondered how long it would stay afloat. I can’t forgive it, even it is an all-you-can-eat place, because there is too much competition around. I’m sorry, dear readers, sorry to have trolled you along like this.