I ATE EEL!

A bunch of us were offsite at a meeting. We were looking over the new NOC (Network Operating Center = main server room) layout we're going to have, comprised of APC (top-quality brand) units. Since we were aways from the station, we decided to have a department lunch (aka - station paid lunch). We went to this chinese buffet called "China Bear". I was really leery because of my experience with chinese buffets down here. I was pleasantly surprised though. Normally these places are where you steer WAY clear of any possible sushi, and other non-normal items that any joe-schmo can cook in the back, and stick to the normal chinese foods like mongolian beef, sweet & sour chicken, etc. Well this place was a huge exception! One of the guys we went with said he loves the place and that they have really good sushi. I've always said I'll try anything, and so I decided I'd try some more kinds of sushi today. I've had a California roll in the past, which is nothing more than some wannabe crab meat, avacado, and rice basically. This time, I started with that, then had a tuna roll, then a shrimp roll, a salmon roll, and then finished with...wait for it.........AN EEL ROLL!!! Wanna know the funny thing...the eel roll was the best one out of them all! I guess it had an oyster sauce on the outside which to me made it taste way better. It looked like a small piece of chicken on the rice, which helped it to go down. My stomach is a little queezy right now, though. I don't know if it's from the anxiety of eating the sushi (since it's raw ya know), the sushi sitting in my stomach and not agreeing with it, or the bumpy backroad we took back to the station. Either way, I would have the eel sushi again. Yup, I said it. I'm not a sushi guy, so it's not like I'll order it myself that much, but if I came across another place selling it, I wouldn't be against getting some.

Oh yeah, and here's a pic of my Director's salmon egg sushi roll. It's a bad pick, but if you could see it close up, all the orange in the pic is literally hundreds of salmon eggs! PUKE!



That's not the worst part though. They were actually serving OCTOPUS!!! Little baby (or at least small adult) octopus! And it wasn't like the guys at my table were trying them out...a few of them had multiple octopi! They'd cut the heads off and eat them, leaving the tentacles which were curled up from the cooking. They said the heads were great, but the tentacles were really chewy. PUKE! I'll try anything once, like I said, but I had pushed my limit with the sushi...I'll save the octopus for later. :)