So, I was looking at the Kumo Japanese Cuisine menu earlier today. Just browsing, you know, seeing what they’ve got. It got me thinking, not so much about what I wanted to eat right now, but about something else entirely.
Seeing all those fancy rolls and stuff reminded me of way back when I first tried making sushi myself. It was years ago, definitely before places like Kumo were common around my area. My buddy, let’s call him Dave, swore it would be easy. “It’s just rice and stuff rolled up, how hard can it be?” Famous last words, right?
The Great Sushi Debacle
We got all the gear, or what we thought was the gear. Sticky rice, nori sheets, some cucumber, imitation crab sticks (we weren’t exactly high rollers), and wasabi.
Here’s how it went down:
- First off, the rice. The instructions said “sushi rice.” We just used regular long-grain rice. Big mistake. It was either too mushy or too hard. Never that nice sticky texture.
- Then, spreading the rice on the nori. Dave slapped a huge glob on the first sheet. It was like trying to spread wet cement with a fork. Rice went everywhere.
- Rolling it up was the real comedy show. We didn’t have one of those bamboo mats, figured a tea towel would work. Nope. The whole thing just sort of… squished. It looked less like a sushi roll and more like something you’d find stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
- We tried a few more times. Each attempt was worse than the last. Bits of rice, crab, and cucumber decorated the kitchen counter, the floor, even the ceiling somehow.
We eventually gave up on the rolling part. Ended up just eating bowls of slightly vinegared rice topped with bits of cucumber and crab stick, dipped in soy sauce. It wasn’t sushi, not even close. Tasted okay-ish, I guess? Mostly tasted like failure.
Looking at the Kumo menu now, with all the perfectly formed rolls, the nigiri, the sashimi… it just makes me laugh thinking about our disaster. We thought we could just whip it up, no problem. Total chaos.
It’s funny how things stick in your memory. Just seeing a menu can bring back a whole afternoon of sticky rice and broken dreams. Maybe it’s better to leave it to the professionals, huh? Yeah, probably.
