Maido Meh

I've been meaning to post this since Thursday night when it happened... Maido is this terrific local restaurant and after many a hem and haw, we settled on it for dinner on Thursday. I walked in and was promptly told by the bartender (this restaurant has wonderful sushi but no sushi bar, when you walk in you are looking at a bar-bar), that "Nancy" (names have been changed to protect the guilt), would be right with me. Nancy was not right with me, in fact, another server asked if I had been helped and the aforementioned bartender told her Nancy would be with me when she came inside.

So, we get seated outside and the weather is lovely and eventually our server asks if we would like something to drink. The water arrives promptly, but "I have to go all the way back to the kitchen to get your ice tea." We're now 15 minutes into this visit. The ice tea finally arrives and we place our order. Everything raw. This shouldn't be a big deal. You shouldn't have to fish before the prep. I also made it clear that I would be ordering more as the night wore merrily forward. We sat down at 8 PM, the food arrived at 8:50 PM. A plate of sashimi, and some sort of roll with avocado on the outside, which had been sitting so long it had kind of melted to the top of the roll.

In their defense: it was some of the best frickin' sashimi I ever put in my face, but when we weren't done, it was clear another hour of waiting was not an option. We went down the street to Osaka where our food was produced in a few minutes and where the waitress and all the staff were solicitous and polite. Oddly enough, that always makes the food taste better. Osaka has always been my go-to sushi bar and now I know why. I won't be making the same mistake again.