Uchi

So I went to Uchi last Wednesday night. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, guys; look I normally go to places where nobody will look me askance if I'm wearing sweatpants as even wearing regular blue jeans sometimes is too dressy for me. I'm what some people could refer to as "fashionally lazy". For the record nobody has ever referred to me as that as I just invented the term. Anywho so I was wearing a dress and it was really bizarre to be hanging out with real adults who go to real restaurants and talk about important topics (I'm not quite sure what these are yet.) It was pretty surreal for me because I've been slaving away at the lower rungs of the restaurant ladder here in Houston for three years now, and walking through Uchi I recognized a good many people as patrons of restaurants I'd worked at. That's pretty weird, guys, to see people on a peer to peer basis that normally you are, in a way, working for. +12 for equality, I suppose.

The only problem is of course that I always struggle to comport myself as an adult. I mean I have everything in my favor, guys: my mother is an etiquette teacher; I wear glasses, which automatically makes me excel in social situations; being 22 years old, I am actually an adult. Eating dinner with a group of my friends normally would exempt me from the world around me - they, being on the same level as me, would never judge me - but Uchi sets out little tasks for you to accomplish in order to eat your meal.

Task 1: when you sit down, the waiter comes and brings you a warm towel. This has only happened to me once, when Canada Air bumped myself and my traveling companions onto a later flight and as an apology upgraded us to First Class. I didn't know what to do with the towel then and I certainly didn't Google it later, assuming I'd never again fly First Class. I had no idea what to do with the towel. For the benefit of you, my viewing public, I went ahead and bit the bullet and asked the waiter - as I suppose I should have inferred, it's simply for cleaning off your hands. I mean come on guys, I should have figured that out, obviously they weren't expecting us to give ourselves sponge baths at the dinner table.

Task 2: If you just order water at this restaurant, which I always do, obviously, as a health conscious young lady (hahahahaha yeah right +2 for myself), they bring you out the tiniest cup imaginable and then a jar of water for which to serve yourself for the duration of your meal. I think this cup is normally for serving Sake in, obviously as Sake is the third grossest beverage in the world (after Guinness and Tab soda) it's important to limit the serving size. This means that either you have to remain dehydrated for the duration of your meal or you have to be constantly reaching into common areas, grasping the community jar, and refilling your own glass between sips. I'm not the most steady individual guys there's a lot of chance there for a person to spill a quart of water all over everyone's sushi, watch out for this risk when you eat here.

Task 3: Look guys here's the other thing, I've never really quite mastered sharing plates with people. I think this is a cultural thing, I really do, and my family is just not the kind that shares food at restaurants. I mean like a bite, I get, but when I order something it's because I've run a cost benefit analysis on everything on the menu, taking into account 1. how much I've enjoyed this or similar things in the past 2. would I prefer to eat this over everything else on the menu 3. does the price compare to how much I'd wanted to spend this evening 4. is there enough of a novelty to this food that I couldn't easily create this in my own kitchen (number 4 obviously counts the least because, as a lazy person, I'm pretty unlikely to recreate anything that can't easily be made by opening a can). There's a lot that goes into what I order at a restaurant and to be expected to immediately turn around and share it with everyone... while it's something I can handle, it's just not a social task I'm often expected to accomplish and I just want you guys to know, Uchi expects you to accomplish it.

I hope these instructions are helpful to any other fake adults out there who are thinking about going to Uchi and need some tips; especially with Valentine's Day coming up this Thursday. I hope you ladies take this as an instruction manual to keep your guys on lock and thinking that we are much more poised and graceful than them, it's a struggle that we all have to keep up with for the good of the gender.