Fear and Loathing in San Sushi
Tonight my wife and I went to San Sushi in Towson for our weekly date night. We were seated next to a table with three middle-age, white collar men who had obviously finished the consumption portion of their dinner and were now talking loudly about various business topics and generally having a good time. Shortly after we had settled in, a waitress approached them and asked if they wanted to box the remainder of their sushi. The man who was talking the loudest told the waitress that was not needed, and then proceeded to offer the platter of sushi, which was actually rather full, to my wife and I. "Just pass it on down the line if you don't want it," he said, half-jokingly. "We're stuffed."
Now, I am pretty sure that by all measurable standards of decorum and cleanliness, it is indubitably, unambiguously uncouth to take an offer like that. Who knows what they had done to that food? It would be eating after others, for crying out loud.
On the other hand, you don't want to turn around and respond, "I don't want your food because I think you're trying to give me AIDS." Plus, sushi is expensive. Plus, I was hungry. Plus, we live in an incredibly wasteful society, and anything to go against that is good, right? Don't you remember the standard lecture at the dinner table about the starving kids in random Third World countries?
So there I was, caught between my miserly and my sanitary desires. On the one hand, I've eaten fried grasshoppers bought in a dusty, dirty African market and lived to tell the tale (actually, the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had was from room service at a Hilton in LA). And I could use the extra money that would be saved. On the other hand, it used to be someone else's food, for crying out loud.
Our final decision? We stared at it for a while, nibbled at a couple of pieces we judged least likely to have been touched, stared at it some more, and then quickly gave it to be thrown away to another waiter who asked if we wanted it boxed. Consequently we managed to be uncouth, unsanitary, and wasteful all at the same time. Isn't compromise great?
November 4, 2003 09:34 PM