Finn Declares – ‘I Love Octopus’ – Kobe Sushi
Author: Bookstore Piet // Category: Moshi-Moshi, kobe, restaurants, richmond, sumo san, sushi
Is Kobe the best sushi restaurant in town – no. Is it the most creative – no. Is it authentic Japanese – not really. I would describe Kobe as a your basic Americanized ideal of a sushi restaurant. If you want innovative and creative dishes try Viktor’s two eateries, Sumo San and Moshi-Moshi. If your looking for your basic gyoza or shumai and nothing too exotic in the way of raw fish, try Kobe. It’s just basic – it’s our Japanese comfort food. Really, we’ve been going here for years and have never had a bad meal nor bad service. It will satisfy your cravings for Japanese in a roadside diner sort of way – just ignore the star scenes that look to have been painted on ceilings and wall by 3rd graders…
What was most interesting about this meal was Finn. He actually has a normal meal at Kobe. To start a plate of stir fried onions, a good way to practice his chopstick skills. When our apps come out he usually grabs one or two of the gyoza, shumai and kara age. During entrees he’ll gobble a couple of pieces of California roll and then finish with a bowl of miso – drunk through a straw. Every now and then he will have a piece of tuna or a shrimp but it’s pretty hit or miss whether he will eat the sushi. There has even been two occasions where he has eaten eel, although I told him it was snake. This visit, was a little different….
I had ordered my ‘usual’ array of sashimi – scallop, surf clam, tuna, toro, white tuna, salmon and sea eel. I always offer Finn some but he declines most. Tonight he threw me a bit off and tried everything. Not a single funny face. Smiles and exhortations of all things fishy. A little hesitation at the eel, until I told him it was snake, but everything went down. As I ran out of things to try he picked up the little sushi board and asked for… octopus.
M and I discussed this. Was he ready for something quite so chewy? Sure, why not. An order went out for octopus and a little more tuna. The plate came out and Finn grabbed not one of the thin slices but the full piece of tentacle. We waited for the verdict. ‘I love octopus!’, Finn declared. OK then. Our child really will eat anything. This, of course, was short lived. The piece proved to be too chewy for him after a couple of minutes and he got a very worried look on his face. This didn’t really surprise us and we allowed him to spit out the half-masticated piece of octopus into a napkin. ‘Too chewy’, he said – which, I suppose is better than him saying he didn’t like it.
Maybe next time we’ll have to truck over to Hana Sushi and see if they have the baby octopus appetizer on special….