Advanced Sushi

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Last night my valentine and I celebrated early at the Viking Cooking School. We liked our intro sushi class with Jimmy Ishii so much, we eagerly signed up for his advanced class.

We got off to a rough start. While driving the monkeys to Kid Station, I got a call from Viking. "Are you coming to the sushi class?" the sweet woman on the other line asked. I looked at the clock in my car glowing 6:10pm.

"Yes," I said. "It starts at 6:30, right?"

"6:00pm," she said.

Crap!! I pulled out my registration sheet in disbelief and there it was clear as day, "6:00pm-9:00pm."

"It'll take us at least ten more minutes to get there," I said.

"That's fine," she said.

Warren, who had asked me 1,000,000 questions about the class, except for "Are you sure it starts at 6:00pm?" was not happy with this news.

By the time I came out of Kid Station, he was really, really not happy.

"You realize they close at 9:00pm, right?"

"Yes," I said in a very small voice. "I'll just leave a few minutes early, come get the kids, and then we'll come back and get you."

He gave me the stink eye.

"Maybe they'll let us reschedule," I tried.

HOW DID I GET THE TIME WRONG??? HAPPY FREAKING VALENTINE'S DAY!

We pulled in right at 6:30pm. I ran in to see if I could just reschedule, but no dice. "We've already bought the food," the not so nice lady at the counter told me.

I managed to coax Warren out of the car and as we sheepishly walked in with our woolly tails between our legs, the nice lady from the phone came up, put a reassuring hand on my arm and said, "Jimmy thought it started at 6:30 too. He just sat down."

I flashed Warren a look. See? I don't totally suck! Jimmy's late too!

"Everything's fine," she continued. "It's a small class. I'm sure you'll be done no later than 8:30pm."

*giant exhale*

We walked in and Jimmy, a Viking assistant dude, and three other dudes were all sitting at the table chatting. The Viking dude, Barrett, relinquished his seat so Warren and I could sit together, and we were off.

Jimmy asked how we had been doing since the last class, if we had been practicing, and what problems, if any, we were having. That's when I had to admit that I hadn't practiced making sushi at all. Lots of practice eating, but not making.

I started to sweat.

Then Jimmy told us what we'd be making: sashimi, ngiri, salmon egg rolls, an Arctic roll, and a cucumber roll.

I considered hiding in the bathroom.

We washed up and took our stations around the prep table. Again, we had most everything there prepped for us, but this time we each had a knife and Jimmy had a giant tupperware full of raw tuna, raw salmon, and eel. YUM.

Jimmy slowly demonstrated how to cut sashimi, form ngiri, and construct each roll, only making me sweat more. He makes it look SO easy! Michael D., a cook at Olive Garden, asked if he could cut the cucumber for the cucumber roll and Jimmy giggled and politely talked him out of it. I nudged Warren and told him to try, but even he was intimidated.

Everyone was scared stupid. Barrett, obviously not comfortable with silence, lamely made some jokes and tried to ask easy questions to get us talking, but failed miserably. To stay busy, he asked for my camera and made me feel even more self-conscious by taking pictures of me lamely attempting to make ADVANCED sushi.

Once Jimmy started sending raw tuna my way I loosened up, remembering that I would soon be eating my weight in my favorite food. Plus, Warren was being very nice (finally!) and let me ask a lot of questions and copy him. He even said I was doing a good job a few times.

I was able to arrange my sushi so that the messed up parts didn't show, and then Jimmy said my rolls looked better than last time. (Not that he actually remembered, but I appreciated the sentiment.)

By the time we sat down to eat, everyone was happy and chatty. I turned to Jimmy and said, "Ok, if you had to hire one of us to work in your restaurant, who would it be?"

He giggled and politely changed the subject.