Frying Fish - Five Hundredth Post-iversary

There are many ways we mark the milestones of our lives. Birthdays and anniversaries mark the passage of time for which we celebrate nothing more than simply surviving yet another day, week, month, or year. There are those milestones that mark achievements – graduations, promotions – things for which we celebrate hard work, a job well done, or reaching some certain goal, whether it was your own, or projected onto you by your parents who wanted you to be a doctor, that we set back when we started. And of course, there are other milestones that just happen as life rumbles, stumbles, and lurches forward – weddings, giving birth to aliens, even funerals – they are all times when we celebrate, or at least reflect on the stepping stones that have gotten us to this point.

Many food blogs “celebrate” their birthday based on time – it’s a food blog, so baking a birthday cake and stabbing it with one, two, maybe three (but not usually more than three, since the majority of food blogs out there are fairly “young”). It is a celebration of blogging for a given period of time.

That is nice. I didn’t do that. There’s nothing wrong with that; I just didn’t do it. The Delicious Life’s “birthday” was back in January. But just like my own birthday that was always eclipsed first by Father’s Day, the end of the school year, and the start of summer vacation when all my little “friends” bussed off to camp or vacation so that my birthday parties were me, my dorky baby sisters, and my parents when I was younger, and now by Father’s Day and other such summer events like weddings, my little blog birthday was hidden in the shadow of Champagne and disco balls. (Did I say “Father’s Day” twice? I’m not bitter. Really, I’m not. I love you, Dad!) Besides, in real life, birthdays don’t mean much after you turn 21, and in the warp speed blogging world, well, by the time your blog turns 1, there’s a fresher, hotter, sexier new blog in the facebook.

Birthdays, anniversaries, and other momentous occasions aside, still, I will make mention. This is my 500th post. But for some reason, it didn’t feel much like a milestone I wanted to celebrate. Sure, it marks a passage of time, 500 posts after the first post I posted some time last year. But there was no achievement associated with the 500th post. There is no "Job well done!" I haven’t accomplished much after 500 posts. It’s just 500 posts of bits and bytes of photographic bits of my dining bites all over LA and in my kitchen. Pointless, wothless, blathersome ether that somehow manages to arrange themselves on a webpage.

I sound depressed. I am. You'd think I'd have something to show by now for the 500 posts I’ve made.

I don’t.

I have no job. My (f)unemployment checks have run out. Blogging doesn't pay, and yet it sucks up all my time and energy. There is no future promise of fame or fortune. No glamorously glossy writing gig for a flashy food and travel mega-magazine. No contract for a book with a bazillion dollar advance.

500 posts have made me fat, flabby, lazy, bitter, pale, and 500 posts older.

Worst of all, my 500th post is about...Frying Fish. Oh God, I've lost my edge.

A long time ago, I went to Frying Fish on a post-college semi-date – the kind that you’re unsure whether it is a date, but it must be a date because we’re not in college anymore and guys and girls actually date, not just “hang out,” but you are a dating rookie and you’re too embarrassed to ask outright “Is this a date?” It was awkward,the conversation was painfully absent at times, and overall, it was a stressful experience. Needless to say, aside from noting that it had a very bad name, I did not pay any attention to Frying Fish at all.

But I did remember that Frying Fish was one of those sushi places. It is one of those sushi places where small plates of sushi are pitched onto a motorized conveyor belt that clicks slowly around the bar in the open, germ-infested air for every diner to eye and assess before the blue-is-$4 plate is snatched off the belt like a Samsonite packed with contraband by some greedy, greasy germ-infested diner’s hands. Based on that fact, its name, and a not-so-hot previous experience, I would never have picked Frying Fish.

Scratch that. Even if my "date" turned out to be the beginning of a fairy-tale romance, I would never have picked Frying Fish.

It was chosen by a friend who is new to both sushi and LA, and I had to go because it was my duty. It was my duty, as prescribed in the unwritten Code of Ex-ethics. I won’t give any details about the situation, but...I will. It had something to do with an ex-boyfriend who was in town with his new exotic erotic girlfriend and had the cajones to call up the ex-girlfriend to have dinner, all together. The ex-boyfriend, his new girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend. I went as wing-man to assess the new girlfriend and perform any catty, bitchy girl-like maneuvers that the ex-girlfriend obviously couldn’t do lest it make her look bad/jealous/omglikeshecares in front of the ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. Yes, I took one for the team. Being catty and bitchy is not “taking one for the team.” Eating at Frying Fish is.

Suffice it to say that the sushi is edible, in the sense that it didn’t make me sick like some other places have, and I have to give credit to Frying Fish’s staff. They stayed open long past their closing time just so we could finish our dinner (which also mean that at that point, we werent getting our sushi off the conveyor belt). The novelty of mobile sushi is, well, a novelty, especially since we live in this oh-so-mobile world. However, for the trek through traffic that it takes to get to Little Tokyo, Frying Fish isn’t worth it, and I’m sure that there are plenty of other sushi bars that are. In the end, I can’t seem to get it out of my head that Frying Fish is basically a mobile buffet, and I’m very opinionated about buffets.

Frying Fish. 500 posts.

Like the slightly more expensive, “special” amber-edged $7 plate on the conveyor belt, I’ll keep going.

Frying Fish
120 Japanese Village Plaza Mall
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213.680.0567

** a year ago today, my caprese salad looked like an orange creme saver **

tags :: food : and drink : japanese : sushi : restaurants : reviews : los angeles