Dinner

My gay/not-gay boyfriend/not-boyfriend took me for a belated birthday dinner at one of the most old school sushi places downtown. We stopped for a beer first and arrived 12 minutes late for our reservation which they had already given away. The host scolded us but sat us anyway, much to the horror of the dozens of folks lining up down the block to get in. A harried waitress somehow brought us handtowels and more beer through the crowd, and then only mocked us once or twice when we dared to ask questions about the menu. She became considerably nicer though when we it became clear that we weren't looking for bullshit yuppie rolls with cream cheese. We ordered respectably (for non-Japanese people): octopus sunomono, fatty tuna nigiri, tamago nigiri, chef's choice sashimi (which turned out to be piles of yellowtail, albacore, squid, salmon, mackeral, and abalone), and then the crown jewels of the night--the yellowtail collar. It was awesome until the host came back and said he needed our table. All of New York has better manners than this place. But then my gay/not-gay boyfriend/not-boyfriend, who is Vietnamese, made everything better by observing quite simply that the host had "turned Korean on us."