i love my roommate. i know i gush about him all the time but he really is the best. as tempting as it is however i am not allowed to pimp him out over this blog. sorry boys.
anyway, so yesterday i was feeling super crabby and cabin fevery because i have been sick with this weird virus that gave me fevers and "temporary arthritis" of the knees. temporary arthritis. i have never heard of this before but apparently it is something you can get with viruses. yes, i am officially a grandma. so i was really ornery because i had been sitting around the house for days watching way too much shitty tv and i was starting to lose my ability to socially interact in a normal way.
brian saw only one solution to this problem... let me loose on the westside. he grew up in... western hills? cheviot? i don't really know. somewhere far. so into the car we went to check out the one (that we know of) japanese restaurant on the westside, sakura.
on the drive i started dreaming about ramen and tempura and bento boxes. brian had never heard of a bento box before so i got him all fired up about it. well then we pull into the parking lot and i realized that maybe my dream was going to remain a dream. "are you sure we're in the right place?" i asked. "yes," said brian. "i told you it was in a hotel."
yes, this is what it really looked like
brian had told me that he used to work at sakura when it was another restaurant back in high school and he was excited to see how it looked now. well it turns out nothing had changed since 2000, or since 1978 for that matter.
damn, i forgot my quaaludes
"we can go somewhere else if you want," said brian. "no," i said, "it's cool. we're here now. let's see what this is all about." i snapped photos of people in cowboy hats while we waited for a table.
brian comes face to face with what could have been his destiny
when we sat down and looked at the menu i got confused. "where are the bento boxes?" i wondered. then it dawned on me. there were no bento boxes. this was some benihana spinoff. we asked for a sushi menu and after giving us a crazy look and announcing that she had a "pen fetish," our waitress wandered off, never to return.
this is the actual menu. those are the actual prices. also, is it just me or is this the first time chateaubriand has appeared on a menu since 1978?
another waitress, who was actually japanese, brought us sushi menus. i had gotten all fired up about drinking mai tais and living it up 70s style but after facing some definitively non-70s prices, we ended up just sticking to water. long wait times were not a problem however because there was lots of great people watching to be had.
dude: so do you know why these people are so skinny?
girl: no, why?
dude: because they eat rice with those sticks and they can only pick it up a little bit at a time and they get tired so they never eat that much.
girl: ohhh.
we did finally get our sushi and it was ok. i give them points for presentation because it did look pretty cool. however the quality of the fish was mediocre... it's not that it had gone bad, it was just flavorless. and almost every sushi option involved a generous dousing of mayo, or something cooked, neither of which are my preferred sushi roll preparations.
pretty...
...but not that good
finally we got our bill and got the hell out of there. we paid $50 including tax and tip which i thought was a lot. i know i am probably preaching to the choir here, but for god's sake do not drive a half hour into the west side to try to get good sushi. for the people watching however, it is definitely worth it.
people watching aside, i needed some kind of gustatory redemption so i asked for my westside guide to take me to one of those west side whippy dip places i keep hearing about. brian knew just the place... zip dip. he made me branch out from my usual boring twist cone so i got a butterscotch sundae and it was delicious.
confucius say... when on the westside, eat as the westsiders eat
i want blue!!!
i want some creamy whip in my mouth!!!
every time i go to the west side i feel like i am in some crazy bizarro sequel to napoleon dynamite where everyone is kind of living in a different time, and yet there is still internet and energy drinks and cell phones. i love it though and a trip to the west side is always the perfect distraction from whatever normal everyday problems i might be having. thanks brian!
7 comments:
the westside can be a lot of fun. sometimes i go with a friend and just drive around looking for cool places and things. and now i want some blue sprinkles on my ice cream!
drew i think you mean you want some blue jimmies on your ice cream
YAY!! Glad you had the chance to enjoy some delicious Zip Dip (it's a family owned gem!)!!!! [=
You've said it before and I still dont believe it.....you are not a gramma.
no, i'm pretty sure i meant SPRINKLES.
the zip dip is our creamy whip of choice. and i think technically, only the chocolate sprinkles are rightly called "jimmies", although my family calls them all jimmies, which really confused me as a kid cause i also have an uncle jimmy.
i think that actually sakura (formerly dante's) did spiff up their interior to go all asianic. i distinctly remember red velvet booths from my childhood sunday breakfasts there. although the chandeliers are the same.
Sakura used to be Dante's a famous (or infamous) Westside institution for many years. It looks like they have kept some of the old dishes on the menu for the blue hair crowd which must still come in. I live on the Westside, in Covedale, and I just can't force myself to go to Sakura. Westside & sushi just don't go together. I still drive to the Japanese restaurants Florence (Miyoshi is the best)when I want sushi or Japanese food.
Post a Comment