Bait

Jasmine Goff Sturgill
English 201.501
Ron Mitchell
Essay #1, Prompt 3 Food-Adventure
First Draft
July 27, 2009
3,095 Word Count.

When you are newly-married, usually money is stretched a little tight. When you are new parents, money is stretched a little tight too. When you are college students, money is stretched out like fishing line. A reasonable conclusion would be that when you are newly-married new parents who also happen to be trying to finish college, money is just something you dream about having “one of these days”. Of course, it doesn’t really matter how broke you are because sometimes you need to do something nice for yourself. Going to movies, going to concerts or just any kind of change of scenery will usually work but when you have a young child and work second shift, it’s all but impossible to find a sitter. No sitter means you get to scratch out the idea of a movie or a concert unless it’s the Backyardigans Live or Elmo on Ice. So realistically, the only places you can drag your kid out in public where you can get out of the house and have a reason to get dressed in something other than flannel pajama pants and flip flops are Wal-Mart and restaurants.
I love food and I really love shopping. I love shopping for groceries best since that’s a requirement that doesn’t make me feel guilty. I love picking out fresh produce to get the most perfectly sweet Bing Cherries, the crispest brightest orange carrots, or the huge package of prewashed organic baby greens from Sam’s Club that will last us closest to next payday without turning brown and soggy. I love smelling the baked goods in the bakery browning to that perfect golden hue. I love looking at all the choices for yogurts, cheese, sour cream, and milk. I am slightly grossed out by having to touch and prepare raw meat but I love the taste of that when it’s all done and yummy in my kitchen.
I love to eat all that food when I get it home. Cooking is fun for me. Trying new recipes is one of my favorite pastimes. Coming up with a creative way to sneak fruits and vegetables into not only my preschooler but into my husband and myself is really fun to me.
Then I have my huge “but”. I hate cleaning up afterwards. My husband and his college roommate once took their dirty dishes to the car wash in the back of his pickup and pressure washed them to get them clean because it was quicker and easier than washing the truck bed full of dirty dishes they had accumulated in the 3 months since they’d last washed them. We all know good food usually makes a good mess in your kitchen that in my house nobody wants to clean up so to make up for feeling like we never get to go anywhere “fun”, we got out to eat.
My husband grew up the youngest of four pretty good sized boys. He’s 6’3” with broader shoulders than most NFL linemen and he’s the middle sized brother. Needless to say, those guys can put some food away! Holidays with my in-laws quickly taught me why my husband eats like someone is going to steal his plate if it’s not cleared off quick enough… His brothers will! I have seen them walk up to one of the others that had a piece of ham or a deviled egg on their plate for longer than forty-five seconds and they’d just grab it and eat it before the slower brother could react.
Quick food in his mom’s house means the same things over and over to the point of my stomach turning at the thought of more Little Caesar’s Pizza. Needless to say, with four boys that all eat like it’s going to eat them if they don’t inhale it, my husband wasn’t raised with much variety in his diet.
So, since he’s been on his own he’s wanted to try all the little restaurants that his mom would just laugh and remind him that there was no buffet upon his suggestion.
We’ve sampled dozens of hole-in-the-wall diners, greasy truck stops and more than our fair share of places where we really couldn’t afford to breathe too deeply. For the past two and a half years, our quest has been towards ethnic foods. We were both familiar with Mexican and Italian foods. He knew he loved Chinese food and I knew if I had sweet and sour sauce, I could eat it too… but we’d never had anything else, anything really outside the box.
On a whim one afternoon while we were living with his mom and trying avoid her in the summer of 2007, we went to Kingsport Tennessee. We had done our normal routine in scouting out Burlington Coat Factory to see if they had any good deals on big guy shirts for him and were ready for lunch.
All the places we normally hit were either too busy or just didn’t sound good so we drove a few blocks past the regular beaten path until we saw this tattoo shop. Brian wanted to get a quote on a touchup on his tattoo so we turned in and almost bottomed out on their driveway. We were disappointed to see it was closed for the day only to realize it was attached to a restaurant we’d never heard of called The Fuji House.
We weren’t sure what kind of food we’d find in The Fuji House but we were up for something different! The outside of the restaurant was kind of plain. It’s just a big white box with the letters in gold metallic over the windows…And a tattoo shop attached to the side. We got the baby out of the car and headed inside and found ourselves in the prettiest Asian restaurant I’d ever seen.
The carpets were thick, plush, and bright deep red. The building was broken up into distinct areas for hibachi, paying, entrance area, a small space to sit on the floor at low tables and a pretty good sized section of regular tables and chairs. Every table in the place had a candle in a pretty red glass making the whole atmosphere really nice.
They had a big pond separating the cashier counter and the floor seating that had its own bridge. Our daughter wanted to climb those steps all day long so she could look at the fish underneath!
We looked over the menu that claimed offerings of Japanese, Chinese, and Thai food. I am not a Chinese food fan and I’d never had Japanese or Thai. The server was a guy in his early 20s who was really nice and explained everything on the menu to us so we knew what we were getting ourselves into. He explained that Thai food was pretty spicy and Japanese is traditionally a little salty. I am NOT a spicy fan and have been known to suck on rock salt so I was immediately excited about the Japanese. He then told us that they did not have any Thai items on the lunch menu but offered a dinner one. Being that we’re pretty much always on a tight budget, we declined and decided to try a couple sushi rolls since they were all under four or five dollars.
I was squeamish about the idea of raw fish. I’ve never been much for any fish that isn’t in nice deep fried little sticks the way God intended so this was a HUGE stretch for me. The husband was stoked that I was willing to try it so we ordered four different rolls. We got their Philadelphia roll which has smoked salmon, avocado, and cream cheese and crunchy bits on the outside. We tried the California roll that has cream cheese, cucumber and crab inside and pleasantly unknown orange juicy specks on the outside. Brian really liked the spicy tuna roll that had tuna fish and something that smelled horrible and made my tongue burn for 45 minutes. Oh, and we got an avocado and cucumber roll.
Honestly, I was not impressed with the sushi at all. I thought it was slimy, hard to eat, and not nearly worth the money. My husband thought it was fantastic. Since I liked the hibachi very well, we decided we’d try it again and sample some different rolls next time.
The first time we went in, I paid more attention to the restaurant and the wait staff and not as much to the other patrons. People-watching is so much fun in places like that because you can obviously tell the people who are there because their wives or fathers or brothers or cousins have drug them there against their will. You can almost see the “Oh my god when I get done pretending to eat this bait I am going to go get a big mac!” written on their foreheads. I’m sure I had that expression on my face the first time we went and I know our daughter did. She only ate carrots and a piece of zucchini the whole time we were there.
The next time we went in there was a family there much like ours. The parents were probably a few years older, I guessed late 20s or early 30s. They had a little boy that was a bit younger than our daughter who was tearing up the rice! At that point, I had never seen a kid who really liked rice but this kid was acting like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten. The boy had his own serving and kept reaching up to steal bites off his mom’s plate. He was a cutie!
We got similar meals this second time and I discovered how great their shrimp sauce tasted. I had forgone it the previous time because it looked like Thousand Island dressing that had been through a blender to remove the lumps. Being that I did not like Thousand Island at all, I didn’t want any part of it. I was feeling more adventurous and sampled it. Then I decided to get a little more. Then I just asked the server to bring the bottle out. After she brought the bottle, I tried to figure out how I could get it in my diaper bag without their noticing. To this day, I crave that dressing. Thousand Island is okay in a pinch but nothing tastes as good to me on salad as cold Fuji House Shrimp Sauce.
I tried mixing the shrimp sauce with soy sauce and found Jasmine’s Zen of Japanese dipping. The shrimp sauce is sweet and slightly spicy and the salty of soy sauce make for what I guess to be the Japanese equivalent of sweet and sour sauce. With sweet and sour being my favorite thing in a Chinese restaurant for the versatility in dipping, I was glad to find a similar dipping sauce there!
Of course, the sushi was better to me the second time. I ate an entire Philadephia roll by myself and wanted more but I knew I had an order of hibachi beef and chicken coming so I should stop. I ate what I could of my dinner and took the leftovers home but not before filling my box up with shrimp sauce and fighting the urge the lick the bottle.
The third time we went was the first time we got a real meal for our daughter. She was coming up on 18 months old by then and was finally to the point that a dozen bites off our plate was no longer enough food. We knew she wouldn’t eat meat so we got her a side order of rice, broccoli, and carrots. I gave her a dish with shrimp sauce to dip and that was the first time in nearly 3 weeks that she really truly ate. I think all mothers get nervous with their little kids won’t eat much and since it was right around the end of July and our meal out to celebrate our anniversary, I remember the dates pretty well. Also, it was the longest no-eating spell she had. She has since recovered and sometimes will out eat grown men.
Another half dozen trips and it got to the point that I wanted sushi and would beg my husband to drive to Kingsport just to get some. He really liked it too so it never took a whole lot of persuasion.
That fall, we found an apartment in another town an hour east of my mother in law. Once we got settled in, we tried the Japanese place in town hoping for a closer version of The Fuji House. We were sadly disappointed.
We went there once. I had no inclination to go back. I’d rather have gone to Pizza Hut or Burger King than go back there and be told what my child can and cannot eat.
We got familiar with the new town and went off exploring further destinations. When you live in the sticks, you find out pretty quickly that you have to drive to get anywhere. By “drive to get anywhere” I mean that most every town that has more than a Wal-Mart and a grocery store is 20-50 minutes away. Lebanon was no different so we accepted the 35 minute drive to Bristol and started exploring down there. Pretty soon we visited every weekend looking for good Japanese food and hopefully a sushi joint.
We tried Kobe Steakhouse first. Kobe has GREAT hibachi food and decent prices but the atmosphere lacks something. They’ve got women dressed up as geishas seating guests but they also refuse to start preparing your food until you are part of a 12 party table. Then they tack on 18% gratuity and don’t fill your drinks up without having to practically throw them at someone’s head. As soon as your food is finished being cooked, they pass out the tickets and stand there staring at you while you eat. Most people box up their food quickly and leave so I am sure my sitting there eating ticked them off a touch.
We liked Kobe’s food but they also didn’t have sushi so we were in search of some place better. I decided to try the phone book and saw an ad for Osaka Sushi Bar. So the next time we headed to Bristol, we decided to find it and see if it suited us.
Have you ever walked into a place and just immediately felt at home? Seriously, that’s how Osaka felt. It was warm and cozy and inviting with candles on the tables like The Fuji House. The servers were all family and had their kids sitting at tables in the back coloring. They obviously loved children because they doted on our daughter like crazy and even rubber banded a set of kid proof chop sticks for her so she could “eat with sticks like daddy”. They had a huge bar where you could sit and watch the chef making sushi.
They had more sushi rolls than I knew existed! They had all kinds of vegetables and fishes and combinations that would leave your taste buds dancing for days afterwards. We tried sweet potato rolls with sweet potatoes and crunchy bits rolled up with rice and seaweed, crunchy cucumber rolls, better tasting Philadelphia rolls, two different kinds of California rolls and dozens of others. My husband and I both found new rolls that were our respective favorites. He loved two of the new ones. His favorite of the favorites is still their spicy rolls which were a combination of salmon, tuna, and whitefish with some mystery spicy ingredients. His favorite that I will touch and enjoy is the dragon roll. The dragon roll was around seven dollars but is huge with almost a whole avocado on top of it with sweet and salty mystery sauce on top. It’s got crab, cucumber, cream cheese, salmon, tuna, and crunchy bits inside and that sweet sauce and avocado on top and its every bit as fabulous as it sounds. My favorite is the salmon skin roll and I do not know what is actually inside it other than salmon and I am content to keep it that way.
We also tried their kids’ bento boxes for our daughter and to this day I keep a picture of that first one on my phone because it was so ridiculously huge and cheap. Those things are enough food for a normal adult and enough for a kid to eat on for three days straight!

Well, the time came that we were not able to find a house to purchase in Virginia and we decided to move to my hometown. Evansville has tons of stuff to do compared to “the sticks” as we call that part of Virginia so we figured we’d find lots of places to eat and new adventures. We live on the east side of town and my husband works on Green River Road so we tried Zuki first. That was a bad idea. We went to Nagasaki for Father’s Day at my dad’s request and while the food was great, the tab for my family of three, my parents, and my three brothers was over three hundred dollars before a tip. That just isn’t something we can afford to do on any regular basis!
Then after going to Menards one afternoon, we decided to try Tokyo Japan. I had the same feeling I had at Osaka. Then I looked at the menu and I did a double take at how cheap things were. My family of three can eat there and walk out with lunch for the next day and not spend thirty dollars. Their sushi is fantastic and their hibachi is great too. They also have a huge saltwater aquarium right at the entrance that fascinates my three year old into silence. She sits there quietly observing and afraid to make any noise so that “Nemo doesn’t get a headache”. So not only do we now get great food and great prices but they have fish to watch my kid!
You really never know what you like until you try things. Sometimes it takes awhile to find exactly what you’re looking seeking. Most people are like toddlers and don’t want to try things that are new to them. I think we should all follow the rule I give my daughter. Eat one big bite of everything. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you a drink of my tea.