sushi-go-round

This is our favorite restaurant.

It’s this bottom-tier, but still yummy, sushi place that sends plates of sushi around the room on a conveyor belt. It’s sushi baggage claim! Can you see the little plates going around in the picture? The kids adore that part.

And this: the eating.

At the sushi-go-round, the color of the plate tells you how much you pay. The above ensemble would be a buck for the pink, a buck fifty for the yellow, and two bucks each for the blue. Plus the mini-miso ramen, Sophie’s favorite.

I find this pricing system amusing. When Paul comes with us, he always wants one of the dark green $5 plates and I say, oh, gosh, you can’t get that! It’s dark green! But he does anyway. He’s much more of a gourmand than I am. He says I eat like a cock-roach, which is true, but it’s kind of a cock-roach restaurant. I mean, not literally, at least, I’ve never seen one…um, okay, I’m totally grossed out now. Anyway, the kids and I stick with the pink and blue plates. Half of it ends up on the floor, anyway, right?

The best part about the sushi-go-round is that you can be eating before you are even sitting down. This is so important with little kids! And with me, because I am terrible at waiting when I’m hungry. And I’m thirty[mumble] years old. Honestly, I can’t stand how rude some parents can be to their kids in restaurants! Making a little person sit in a chair and wait for food (and then getting mad at said little person for being unhappy, fidgeting, climbing their chair, dumping the salt) is asking for too much. It sets the kid up to fail. Which he or she does, and then the parent gets mad at the poor kid and scolds, or publicly shames them, or worse. This does not make a small person think, “Wow, I am so happy I am in this family.” Really. I say, get out the ipod and play a game together, at least. Or better yet, just don’t go to places where there is a wait. Be Kind to your small people. They deserve this generosity.

There. I have spoken. Sometimes I have to get these things off my chest.

[/mini-rant]

Luc’s favorite part of the sushi-go-round is that our waitress, who has beautiful black hair down to her butt, makes him kid-chopsticks by rolling up the paper the chopsticks come in, and applying a rubber-band, creating a pair of pincers. Actually, he likes to eat the sushi and noodles with his fingers, while pinching me with the chopsticks. Have I mentioned that Luc has an awesome giggle? But what is so funny about pinching me? I ask you.

The sushi itself is mediocre at best, the kind of thing where maybe eating the cooked stuff is a good idea. And a course of anti-biotics, perhaps. But, hey, the wasabi takes care of most of that, right?

Which reminds me: once when Sophie was about 3, she grabbed the wasabi first thing and shoved the whole green blob in her mouth, while Paul and I leaped across the table in slow-mo, NOOOOOOOOOO!

—but we were too late! Her whole face flushed strawberry red, and she opened her mouth, the green blob sitting there on her tongue with this audible sizzling sound, a look in her eyes that said, “What have you done to me?!!?” and then she let out this piercing wail that would have shattered all the glasses in the joint if, you know, they hadn’t all been plastic. Oh, man, did she CRY. Poor baby. The whole restaurant stared at us with HORROR, like we were evil torture monsters with black hoods and axes, and we flailed around, trying to get the stuff out of her mouth while trying to pack ice in. Oh my god, I’ll never forget that.

She lived. And she still likes sushi.

When the kids are done eating, they have to get up and play. Pay in cash, tip big, and get’em the hell out of there. They are so happy. And so is our waitress (even though she has to clean up after us), and so are the other customers.

Restaurant-Win!

I say, if you’ve got little kids, skip the restaurants with menus and go to the sushi-go-round, where the food travels the room on a color-coded plate, waiting for your arrival.