The Sushi Debacle

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Continuing on my rant about food from yesterday, I thought I'd tell a little story about an "encounter" a few of us had with some Mexican sushi yesterday. No don't worry it's not stomach curdling, never look at sushi the same way, disgusting as you might think. The sushi itself was quite delicious, better quality than some I've even had in the states. Instead, it just helps to further illustrate the language barrier issues we encounter here, as well as describing how even Japanese delicacies can take on their own little Mexican flare.

So last night a few of us decided that we were in the mood for sushi. I guess one too many banana-egg-chili pepper concoctions can leave you in the mood for something a little more familiar. Now after trying the sushi place by our house and deciding that warm cream cheese concoctions weren't up to par, we decided to try somewhere different. Word of mouth suggested a sit down sushi place in the mall, known to have killer specials with really good sushi to boot. So we hailed a cab, costing us about a dollar each, and made our way uptown to try our hand at Mexican sushi one more time. After a quick errand running trip to office max (it's amazing how so many of us forgot to bring school supplies...its almost as if we didn't associate coming to Mexico with school...) we made our way over to Cuernevaca´s Galleria mall. The mall itself isn't very big, and it boasts more beauty supply shops and American restaurants than really anything else. So after a few disappointing minutes of wandering around, we quickly found ourself in front of a very well decorated mall sushi shop. After picking a seat and chugging down some bottled water, we started flipping through the menus. Despite our less-than-mastery of the Spanish language (which becomes even more complicated when trying to decipher sushi vocabulary) we came across this special listed at the bottom of one of the pages, that listed 2 for 1 sushi rolls every monday,tuesday and wednesday after 7. Considering that it was 7:05 on the dot and a wednesday we couldn't resist taking them up on their offer.

When the waiter came to take our orders, we glady each pointed to two different sushi rolls we wanted (some that we knew and quite a few other that we had no idea what was in them) After the order he laughed and said something in spanish, waiting for us to nod our heads in agreement. Of course, we nodded, having no idea what he said. He asked again ¿Bueno? (Is that okay?) and we smiled and nodded, hoping he wouldn't catch on to our complete oblivion to whatever just came out of his mouth.

We quickly learned we should have asked for clarification. About 20 minutes later the waiter came out carrying 6 plates of sushi, each plate with around 8 pieces of sushi. 3 girls and 48 pieces of sushi was a little more than we could handle...But it didn't stop us from trying. Trying to eat all the sushi reminded me of the hot dog eating contest on Coney Island. I think I finally can really sympathize with the people who participate in that. I can't even begin to expain how intensley difficult it is to cram that much food in your stomach, 7 sushi rolls after you knew you were full.

What made the consumation of so much sushi even harder, was the little bit of mexican flare...or should i say jalepeño and jabenero (the hottest pepper in the world) peppers added to the sushi and the sauces on them. 3 or 4 of the rolls we ordered were jam packed with peppers and topped with melted cheese. I've eaten a lot of sushi in my life, and never once has melted cheese or deathly hot peppers been an ingrediant I've had to deal with.

Anyways, somewhere around an hour later we finally gave up. About 10 sushi rolls sat untouched on the plates in front of us, but no one could take anymore. The waiter just took the plates away and laughed, I'm sure at this point knowing full well we understood nothing that he'd said to us when we ordered that collasal order of sushi .

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