Over my weekend in LA I went out for sushi at [will ask name of restaurant] on [Beverly? I need to pay more attention...], and the experience made me realize that I'm slowly and surely on my way to sushi snobbery. I am reading these gushy, wannabe restaurant critiques on Yelp and can't help but cock my eyebrow in confusion. Did we go to the same restaurant? I have to give it to them, the fish was fresh and obviously money is invested in this place (strip mall valet parking, for god's sake), but the preparation of the sushi was terrible. The fish was mashed up into unrecognizable balls squished next to giant cuts of cucumber. The nigiri was good and fresh tasting, but the fish still didn't slouch over the rice, lazy and glistening, the way it does at Kirala in Berkeley.
I know I might sound just like the above mentioned yelping wannabes, but I have no problem with flowery description of food. I just feel that the food is what is really important. Some of these reviews gave stars for the color choice of the walls. I've eaten decent sushi at places with an enormous Betty Boop figure greeting you at the door and a blowup Budweiser Godzilla hanging from the ceiling. And not in an ironic hipster way. Tell me about the food, the texture, the smell. I suppose I do have an obsession with nice silverware at restaurants, so maybe that I should give these yelpers a break. What I'm trying to say is that I write about my personal experience at a restaurant, not how I would look dining at this restaurant on a magazine photo. Perhaps it's not Yelp, but LA.
I don't have any good sushi photos, but I found this one on Flickr. Check out this photographer's awesome macro skills! Makes me feel like I need a better camera...
