You romp your way across the road, thrilled to smell the waft of sushi forthcoming. Blaming it on the recent suffering from a bout of Japanese flu bug, you feel just contented to plop yourself in front of the sushi counter where you could seek food therapy. Outcome? Total tragedy.

Otoro makes me go weak in the knees. When I saw that the Sushi Mori Matsu set ($32) promises a piece of otoro sushi amongst others, I singled it out from the many other dizzyingly lunch sets (which were way much cheaper incidentally).

The instant that piece of ‘otoro’ appeared on my sushi platter, I knew I was duped. It was at most a chu-toro. There was no marbling on the slice of toro. Only slightly with a pink tinge, I almost thought it was maguro. Oh what heresy. Then there were the usual suspects, kanpachi and tai, which were unquestionably waning from days of storage (ok it’s not shipment day but WTH.). The hotate was better off smokin’ in the yakis. Amaebi and tekka maki was middling, the uni didn’t taste/ smell anything like the typical ones I was accustomed to having. The quality ones smell at best a little unpleasant. The worst was the anago neta, which was leathery to the bite (like bak kwa?), not to mention thrusting stiff with all its bones galore. The sushi rice didn’t help to allay my frustrations either. The rice pads weren’t tasty and couldn’t even stand firm for their neta. I didn’t even think they were the short grained Japanese rice. I couldn’t detect any hint of vinegar.

Then there was something fishy (sic) about the tamago. It tasted suspiciously rubbery. The humble tamago may be a very ordinary occurrence in any place which peddles Japanese food, but don’t belittle this unassuming little thing. The best sushi chefs have toiled many hours away in the kitchens just perfecting the right egg, which naturally is testament to his abilities. But this Egg? Here it is neither sweet (which it must be for crying out loud!) nor savory (hur), but tasted somewhat insipid and rubbery (think MacDs scrambled egg marry agar-agar then you get the idea here). Evidently, those Chinese chefs behind the sushi counter were still wet behind the ears, coz when I quizzed one of them about his own special maki roll, he wasn’t even sure…of his own wares! I was certainly dubious of that baffling maki roll which of course didn’t make it my lunch plate eventually. Oh. Did I say the otoshi was FOC? But it had better be coz those pickled sliced radish thingys really taste revolting.

The waitresses are akin to the Kuriya and Akashi types who were very proficient with their menus, probably even better than the chefs. Call me a Japanese food snob, but I simply hate the way they get me mechanically started on the triviality on ‘how the aji should be eaten’, or what goes into ponzu or how the damned isaki is sliced (‘thinly sliced’ as opposed to ‘usuzukuri’ which I am more predisposed to hear).

The crowd was fairly healthy with mostly mum-kid-wannabes spilling all over the counter tables. No natives were observed. Wonder what that means?

So it’s the abysmal feeling that I get when I feel like I’ve senselessly wasted calories and money on some sloppy pieces of sushi after idiotically enduring slipshod efforts from raw and amateurish sushi chefs, when I walked out that place finally. For the heftily priced $32 set, I would have gotten more bang for my buck with Aoki’s similar rendition, with an accompanying array of some very exotic desserts and healthy salad greens thrown in. The only passable thing I ate during that jaded lunch was probably the miso soup, which pretty sums up about everything here.

Dang. Should have stuck with those Balls instead.