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I recently ate lunch alone at our local sushi place. I've eaten there before, but it's always been for dinner, so I've not investigated their overwhelming list of rolls and hand-rolls. After much price-comparing and ingredient-pondering, I ordered the restaurant's specialty roll, with salmon skin, avocado, eel, cucumber, and a topping of pretty pink fish roe.
The fully-packed roll came sliced into eight pieces, with the usual wasabi and pickled ginger on the side. Each piece was at least the size of a golf ball. How was I going to eat this thing? Cram a piece into my mouth? Or try to take a small bite from it, causing the whole thing to disintegrate and escape the (already tenuous) clutch of my chopsticks?
I picked up the smallest of the eight pieces with my chopsticks and stuffed it into my mouth. It barely fit. It was full of delicious tastes, but it completely filled the available space in the cavity of my mouth. If this one would barely fit into my mouth, I knew that cramming in a larger piece would cut off all access to air. I'd suffocate.
My only choice was to make two bites of each piece. Is that how you do it? I'm asking. And if it is, can you explain to me how you gnaw through the nori sheet with your eyeteeth, while leaning over your plate in anticipation of fall-out? I don't think you can do it, so if you think you can, call me and we'll do lunch together at a Japanese restaurant.
Here's what happens. The nori, crisp when the rice is first rolled up inside it, softens with the moisture of the filling. As it softens, it becomes slightly tough—deliciously tough, but too tough to bite through neatly or gracefully. When you attempt to bite it, you are left with half the roll in your mouth and the other half hanging out, like a cat caught in the midst of eating her mouse dinner. And inevitably the roll breaks apart and falls onto the plate, if you are lucky, or the table and your lap, if you aren't.
Can I blame this on their too-loose rolling? Is there anyone but me I can blame? Do I have to forego these delicious rolls? Do I have to embarrass myself by asking for a knife and fork? (Are knives and forks even available at sushi restaurants?)
Oh yes. A possible solution. I can order these rolls to go, then race home to eat them in the privacy of my own dining room, with no waitresses to giggle behind their hands at my ineptitude.
New country-western song: "Oh, my mouth's too small for sushi, take me back to pork and beans . . ."
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