All You Can Wait Sushi (And Wait. And Wait. And Wait.)
We walked into Sushi Moto on a Thursday night as a party of five and found the place completely empty. In hindsight, this was not "good luck," it was foreshadowing.
We were excited for all-you-can-eat sushi and dutifully filled out their little order slip like people who still believed in systems and process. My wife, who isn't a sushi fan, ordered a bento box. The bento arrived promptly. We told her to go ahead and eat. She did. She finished. She had time to question her life choices, achieve personal growth, and possibly age a year. Meanwhile, the rest of us were still waiting for sushi that had apparently been filed under "optional."
Other tables arrived. They ordered. They received food. They ate. They probably went home, tucked their kids into bed, and watched a show. We, however, were still sitting there being periodically checked on by wait staff who appeared to be earning extra credit for their civics class. "Everything okay?" they asked. What we needed was sushi. What we had was an endurance trial.
Multiple times, they asked us what we had ordered, strongly suggesting our original order slip had been eaten by the building. Eventually, they stopped pretending and just started sending us random sushi like some kind of cursed seafood gacha game.
About an hour and a half in, my wife started feeling unwell and went to wait in the car. Remember that. It gets worse.
Eventually, sushi began to arrive. Unfortunately, this is when we realized the people behind the counter were not "chefs" so much as enthusiastic participants in a fish-related crime spree. The nigiri was easily four times normal size. Each piece was a structural engineering project. The rice portions were so excessive they could have been used for disaster relief. The fish looked like it had been torn apart using either a butter knife or a small piece of farm equipment.
This was not sushi. This was rice-forward performance art.
At some point, the manager or owner came over. She sounded exactly like the woman who says, "Your Bluetooth device is ready to pair," which was fitting, because nothing else in this establishment seemed properly connected. She asked if everything was alright. We were still missing a huge portion of our order.
My youngest son, driven to madness by the endless wait for his crab sushi, finally snapped and started eating the lemon rinds off other plates like a Victorian street urchin who had lost all hope.
We finally gave up at the three-hour mark. Not because we had all we could eat. But because we had all we could endure. We paid in full and left, having achieved neither satisfaction nor nourishment.
Outside, we found my wife in significantly worse shape than when we left her. She was green, visibly ill, and vomited on the way home. Later that night, she ended up in the ER and was diagnosed with acute pancreatitis. I am not saying Sushi Moto caused this. I am simply laying out the timeline. The coincidence, however, is cinematically cruel.
In summary:
* Service operates on a mystical, unknowable schedule
* Orders are more of a vibe than a system
* Nigiri is served in Godzilla scale
* Rice is apparently applied with a snow shovel
* "All you can eat" is technically true if you bring camping gear and emotional support
If you're hungry, go literally anywhere else. If you're looking for a three-hour psychological experiment featuring fish, confusion, and regret, Sushi Moto has you covered. read more