Post #80264 by Humuhumu on Wed, Mar 10, 2004 3:30 PM

This past weekend, a very important thing happened. I have a sushi place.

This was no simple thing. Upon moving to Southern California, I very quickly set out to find some good sushi places. I was quickly daunted -- you see, sushi places are everywhere here. Everywhere. Hundreds of places, I didn't know where to begin. I checked Citysearch, whose top places sounded a wee bit too chic for me -- dress codes & reservations needed far in advance, long waits for a seat, valet parking, "sushi nazis"... (Okay, maybe not too chic for me, but they didn't sound like the kind of place it would be practical to eat at once a week.) I was just looking for a reliable little place with GOOD sushi. Really good sushi. How can that be hard?

Rather than dive into the Citysearch listings, I opted to ask a couple of local fellows to take me to their favorite sushi places. The first place was awful -- my maguro looked and tasted like it was made out of a pink kitchen sponge. The second place was mediocre -- not offensively bad, but nowhere near good.

My experiences were so disheartening that I was afraid to try again. Looking at all the sushi places, and judging from my attempts to get tips from actual people who said they loved sushi (I should have known I was talking to the wrong people when I kept getting recommendations for all-you-can-eat sushi), I thought it would take countless more crappy meals before I would find a good place. It was so frustrating to want sushi so badly, see sushi places everywhere, and feel so helpless.

Then! Fortune! With my Mom visiting this weekend, we decided at the last minute that we didn't feel up to a trip to Trader Vic's and the Dresden Room, and we decided to try for sushi. I went back through the Citysearch listings one more time, but everything looked like it was going to be too dressy, or impossible to get in at the last minute on a Friday. Then, just as I was going to give up, I looked at the very last place on their top sushi list -- Echigo.

Echigo! Oh, sweet darling Echigo! I am so sorry it took me so long to find you! Echigo is fantastic -- even better than my favorite places in Seattle. The place looks iffy -- it's in a cruddy mini-mall, above a Pizza Hut of all things. When we got there, the place was totally dead, even on a Friday night. But ohhhhhh, the sushi was good (there is a sign on the wall -- "No California Rolls!"). Even better, this place is just down the street from me. Hurrah!

Now, I feel at home. I have a sushi place.