Eat it! Eat it Raw!

Clyde and I go out for dinner. We wind up at Haru, one of our favorite neighborhood hangouts.

Eating at Haru used to be a no-brainer. We appear at the door so often, the staff knows our drink order by heart. At lunch, we always order bento boxes: a scoop of fried rice, two steamed dumplings, a side salad, a california roll, and an assortment of hand rolls or tempura vegetables. For dinner, we fill out the sushi card: crawfish roll, spicy tuna roll, dynamite roll, asparagus roll, dragonfly roll (shrimp, wrapped in rice, wrapped in lettuce, drizzled in sweet sauce).

Problem: on Atkins, the essential ingredient in sushi, white rice, is forbidden. The delicious crusty batter on tempura veggies is forbidden. We scan the menu for low-carb items, finding a seafood soup, a plate of edamame … and sashimi.

Sashimi, raw fish, is the perfect Atkins menu item: pure protein. Our server brings us a round lacquered box stuffed with glistening slabs of tuna, white fish, salmon, and scallops. She looks at the box, and looks at us. Americans don’t usually order so much sashimi. “I think that this is not enough,” she says. “How about a house special roll?”

I lift a floppy sliver of salmon with my chopsticks. “We’ll start with this,” I say. “If we’re still hungry, we’ll order more.”

We dig in. The salmon is cool, firm, and full of flavor. The tuna has less tastes and requires more dipping in soy and wasabi. The white fish is tasty, if a bit distant. In the end, we’re left with the scallops: dollops of white gel seated in a hollowed-out half-lemon.

The kitchen staff and servers lean in, watching me, holding their collective breath.

The tiny critters prove too wiley for my chopsticks, so I grab my soup spoon — one of those fat, boat-like porcelain affairs the size and shape of a shoehorn — and scoop up a mouthful. The meat is cold and creamy, riddled with salmon roe. It’s good — just not something I’d order every day.

I put on a big smile. The servers and kitchen staff relax. Our server tiptoes over to our table. “You like sashimi!” she exclaims, pointing to the empty box.

As it turns out, I like everything about sashimi … except the bill.