Aoki– time to practice its swing.

Daniel Niyomiya* is retired: this is what he has decided. Sure, he has a job, but he also plays a considerable amount of golf and takes time out for road trips to Napa Valley to eat dinner.

Eating with a recently retired person is like eating with your favorite uncle: it’s pleasant and unencumbered by complaints about the work day and traffic.

Daniel Erik and I went to Aoki– an old high school haunt of mine. Many a youthful evening was spent at Aoki before or after a movie. Then I grew up and rarely returned. One evening, as Erik and I were driving by, I saw the sushi chef, his hair has silvered and his jowls have announced themselves. He looked settled in an odd way, settled but unsettled, as if there were somewhere else he should be but he’d been in the wrong place for too long to move on.

In a burst of sentimental enthusiasm, I decided that I wanted to go. So when we had a drink with Daniel Niyomiya at La Spiga, I suggested we go there.

Our entrance was less than enthusiastically acknowledged. No greeting came from behind the bar like in the old days. The sushi bar, which is crammed up next to the door, seemed more awkward than it once had. It was also stickier than it used to be and needs to be refinished.

Daniel (in Japanese) a plate of chef’s choice. Erik and I ordered our standard: radish sprouts, broiled eel, salmon and crab. It was a tester order, in case the food didn’t thrill us, we could leave relatively unharmed.

Daniel’s plate, when set, dripped fish juice onto the bar. Our plate of old standards was uniformly fine. Erik had read my sushi chapter in the book and was petrified of screwing up– which is the antithesis of the intent of the book. The whole fun of dining with a newly retired person idea was quickly devolving.

So we did what everyone should do to make a meal better: we ordered more booze.

The fish was good: fresher than it looked on the dripping plate; after we downed few glasses of sake the service seemed friendlier. Daniel ordered for each of us a fermented soybean hand roll, which was a mild, somewhat sweet end.

However, sigh, dining at Aoki wasn’t like eating with a favorite uncle. It is a place that exudes fatigue and I couldn’t help, for its sake, wish that it would retire so as to be free to go play a round of golf.




Wanna see what I said about Taco Time? Click here.

*names are changed to protect the innocent diner.