Hammer Sushi
January 06, 2007

After visiting the dentist yesterday, Jin and I stopped in at a small restaurant for a quick bite.  I wasn't very hungry, but she was.  And after witnessing what I was about to see, I definitely wasn't very hungry.  This is what I saw:

Hammer + Fish = Sushi

Yep!  Hammer + Fish = Sushi!  When I entered the restaurant, something just didn't seem right to me.  It was very cramped and the few tables and stools they did have were so close to the kitchen it felt like we were helping to cook.  I was trying to not be an American snob and look down on the place, but I just didn't get a good vibe.  Jin realized that I didn't want to stay (I didn't sit down or take my coat off) and said she'd order something to go and we'd go somewhere else.

A few minutes later, the sushi chef came from behind the kitchen counter (just a few feet from me) and proceeded to the front window of the restaurant (a few feet the other direction) where they had a medium size fish tank of what I'm calling Korean flatfish.  They are funky little boogers and they are pretty much just fish that are flat.  I mean super flat!  They don't seem to average more than a 1/2" to 1" from their backs to their bellies.  Some can be bigger and long, but they are all super flat.

The chef grabbed 4 or 5 and began trekking the 4 feet back to the kitchen.  He then grabbed the oddest kitchen tool I've ever seen.  A claw hammer.  Yep...a freaking hammer!  He laid out a fish onto the cutting board and BOOM BOOM BOOM.  Hit them 3 times in the head.  I'm not sure what those fish did to piss off that chef, but boy was he pissed.  I'm pretty sure that hurt and will leave them with one heckuva headache tomorrow.

It turns out that those fish will soon be a sushi dish similar to the one you see above.  Needless to say, I didn't stick around to see the end result.  So, the moral of the story is:  Never piss off a Korean sushi chef with a hammer.

What I learned today about Korea:  1)  Hammer + Fish = Sushi.