Category — Design

For the longest time, I have subconsciously associated generic names of businesses with mediocrity. I finally have a data-point to warrant a change in this paradigm.

As many of you know, beach towns produce good seafood. I have generally liked seafood for most of my life, but it’s been the tame kind (i.e. fried shrimp from Red Lobster, or the occasional gourmet crab cake). Living in Corpus Christi has opened my eyes (and tastebuds?) to seafood – through necessity. When it comes to food diversity in the Coastal Bend, we’re batting about 0.190. Therefore, seafood brings a new option for me, and one that I can pretty much trust will be a good one; as all of the fish is very fresh.

Enough with the background. I used to hate sushi. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat it. In high school, a group of guys started eating sushi each week on a certain night. I wasn’t in the group, but I joined them occasionally. It took some serious intestinal fortitude to hold down the new slimy substance that hadn’t found a special place on my pallette just yet. But, like most things, the more I ate, the more I came to appreciate raw fish.

Moving down here, I didn’t exactly think about the abundance of opportunity for sushi, but in our exploration of the finest in two-star dining, we were fortunate enough to stumble into the best place on Padre Island. Sushibar, is an awesome place to enjoy a relaxing night in Corpus Christi. The website allows you to view pre-recorded video of the restaurant and its patrons as they eat. I don’t know why. The people who work there are all really hip, and the place is furnished in a very modern asian way. Huge, high quality pictures of people eating sushi flank the walls, and several flat screen TVs show totally random closed-circuit broadcasts of their favorite abstract music videos and breakdancing competitions.

Onto the best part though. The sushi is the best I’ve ever had. I’ve had sushi in a lot of places, too. Places like Uchi in Austin, Two stick in Oxford, Little Tokyo in Jackson, Nagoya, Aka, Stix, etc. And none even come close. A typical meal…

Start off with some ninja noodle salad. Literally – pasta noodles, crab, tuna, squid, avacado, homemade srirachi and green onions, etc. It’s like a seafood pasta salad. Accompany that with seaweed salad. Very finely shredded seaweed, cucumbers, green onions, and sesame seeds, covered in a very light, sweet oil based dressing. We’d likely have some of the gyoza next. Flash fried pork dumplings garnished with eel sauce, and green onions. These are unbelievably good. The goto rolls for us are the “Flying Fish” and the “Geisha”, but we also usually get one or two of the special rolls of the night. Last night, it was blue marlin, avacado, krabstik, cream cheese, and green onions. Ridiculous. Occasionally we’ll have some fresh peppered yellowfin tuna, but their specialty lies in the Escolar (white tuna). Here’s a PDF of their menu.

If anyone comes to visit us down here, I’ll take you to eat here. If it’s not the best sushi you’ve had, it’s on me. Until next time.

For the 6.8 months that I’ve been married, I’ve watched so much HGTV that I could easily fix just about anything cosmetic in a house, tell you what ‘you can get for the money’, suggest whether to paint an ‘accent wall’, what compliments what, etc. But one thing that really wears me out is this: on EVERY SHOW that has a designer offering tips, there is the obligatory trip to the ‘accessory store’ (i.e. Pier One Imports, World Market) where the couple, or one spouse and the designer, or the design team, or any combination of these go through and point out objects and items that will ’spice up’, ‘make it sell’, ‘dress it up’ etc. Enter the things I hate:

1. I hate how superlative the people are! Every comment regarding decorative pieces are preceded by AMAZING, MOST BEAUTIFUL, AWESOME, THE BEST, TOTALLY, UNBELIEVABLE, etc.

2. The worst thing about these shows is the dialogue. The designer will find something he/she likes in the store, and then comment on it while peppering it with superlatives. The spouse/other designer will say nothing of substance at all, just reword her sentence and and make it sound like a relevant idea.

It usually transpires like this:

Designer: “OH MY GOSH!! Darryn, just LOOK at these sconces!@!” These would be THE BEST in your dining room — they would really show off the detail of the AWESOME crown-molding and really tie in the neo-traditional motif we’re going for!! TOTALLY!

Darryn: “You know what, Paige? This is unbelievable, the sconces definitely play off of the crown molding in the dining room and would play off of the traditional theme we are going for.”

Another example is when they are touring a new house or something similar (i.e. House Hunters, Property Virgins)

Real Estate Agent: “WOW, Cheryl, this bedroom is just what you were looking for, it is so GREAT. The closet space is perfect, and the refinished hardwood floors really make the room pop!”

Cheryl: “I really like how the hardwood floors make the room just-kind-of pop out at me, and you know what..the closets are just what I was looking for.”

I want to pull out my eardrums.