I like the sushi cos it's never touched a frying pan

[venta]

Yesterday, in a sushi restaurant, I observed that one could get a sushi roll containing "Cooked Gurds". Using the sort of lateral thinking required on typo-ridden menus, I decided they probably meant "gourds", and that it would be some sort of squash. Which sounded interesting.

I ordered one: "a sushi roll with gourds, please". "Cooked gurds?" enquired the waitress, pointing to the menu. She pronounced it as "cook-ed". I agreed. I wouldn't want raw squash, after all.

Food began arriving. A small board with six maki sitting neatly on it landed. It looked like fish; I ruled it to be part of ChrisC's sushi set, and he ate it (well, except for the bits I filched). I'm pretty sure it was fish - and raw fish at that.

Then ChrisC's sushi set arrived... with its own roll in tow. Nothing else showed up.

We therefore deduced that whatever the first roll was had been my cook-ed gurds. Does anyone have the first idea what cook-ed gurds might be ? Did, in fact, completely the wrong thing show up, but we failed to realise ? A quick google has not proved helpful.

(In other respects I was quite impressed with the food served by the extraordinarily busy Café Japan. My set meal - a big pile of four kinds of sashimi, miso soup, rice, salad, a tofu startery thing and some pickles - seemed like pretty good value at £12.)

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Curds - tofu?

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's plausible, though I think they did say "tofu" elsewhere on the menu.

I guess there are two questions: what's cooked gurds, and what did I get. These may have different answers. I'm pretty confident the roll we got wasn't tofu, but perhaps it should have been.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Gurnard? That wouldn't explain the cook-ed though.

[paste.livejournal.com]

that was going to be my guess as well!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I wondered, but do people eat gurnards ?

Also, the cook-ed gurds were hanging about in the cheap end of the menu with the things like avocado, so an unusual fish seems relatively unlikely. Squash was a much better bet :)

[chrisvenus]

You know that somebody in the restaurant would probably have been more qualified to answer the question than your LJ friends... ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise there was a question until quite late on in the meal - and since they were very busy, and quite a few of the staff didn't speak great English, I figured it wasn't worth bothering them.

But yes, they probably would have had a better chance of knowing the answer :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Although you might have got an answer like:

"Is gurd, slice very small, cook-ed, a little rice wine, in sushi roll!"

[condign.livejournal.com]

All I can think of is "curds," as in "egg curds." I've seen tamago described as "egg curd." On the other hand, that's nigh-near impossible to mistake for fish.