Before coming to Yale, I had never had Sushi. I always looked at it with an air of disgust, mostly because I had heard that it was mainly composed of raw fish, a green papery substance that I later learnt was seaweed, and sticky rice. To the average Ugandan, that does not sound appealing at all! The very idea of eating raw food would cause most to squirm in disgust!
So you can imagine by reaction when one of my suitemates decided that we should have a “suitemate dinner” at Samurai, a Japanese restaurant in town. I had been there once before, and on that occasion, I had adamantly refused to try any sushi dishes – even the vegetarian ones which should have been a lot easier for me to stomach. But it was four of them against one of me, so they cajoled and convinced me until I finally gave in!
Samurai is just a 5-minute walk from where I live, which is right in the middle of Old Campus. Upon arriving, my suitemates got really excited! We decided to order a “Party tray”, which basically meant that we could order up to 10 varieties of sushi for a very good price. I insisted that we order at least one vegetarian roll and one chicken roll, just in case I decided I was neither bold nor ready enough to venture into the crazy world of sushi, aka not ready to eat raw fish.
We ended up with variations of crab, tuna, tempura, scallop and yellow tail (some of these names I have actually never heard before!) Given my conservative sushi tastes, I of course tried the vegetarian and chicken rolls first. However, as the evening wore on, I decided that Yale was a place at which I was supposed to be trying new things! Besides, raw fish couldn’t possibly kill me, right?
So I dived into the deep end of sushi! I timidly reached out to the party tray, and grabbed a hot yellow tail roll. Its orange color was like a siren to my eyes, but I set aside my fears. I dipped the roll into a bowl of soy sauce, and thrust all of it in my mouth before I changed my mind. I then hesitantly started to chew, testing the new yet vibrant flavors on my mouth. To my surprise, the taste enthralled my taste buds! So this was what Sushi tasted like! I should never have been so scared in the first place!