Soma Sushi

Oh you guys thought you'd gotten rid of me? You thought you'd chased me out of town for good? Well you were wrong! Sorry about my absence over the last few months, I've been in hiding after a restaurant review gone horribly wrong ended with me running for my life on a five-continent chase for my life. In the end I made it out alive with barely any scratches; the disgruntled restaurateur, however, is sleeping with the fishes. At the Moody Gardens aquarium, because he likes sleeping there and it makes him feel more at peace. Neither one of us will be getting the show on the Food Network any time soon, it seems.

I'm here with you today to discuss my current favorite restaurant, Soma Sushi. I'll tell you what, guys, I've fallen hard into this ramen trend. Is ramen even still a hot trend? I don't know, because I haven't been eating anything else so I've missed all the new food crazes. I like going to Soma because it makes me feel alright about paying $17 for something I can make for thirteen cents at home. It's just a really sexy restaurant, with it's dim lights and deep red accent walls and the pictures of mostly naked men and women on the bathroom doors. +17 Like I feel like I'm some kind of international spy, meeting my lover from the other side for our once-yearly tete-a-tete. Honestly those bathroom doors are the coolest I've ever seen, and if I didn't think it would keep me from getting my security deposit back I'd install some in my apartment.

Despite the fact that this is my favorite restaurant, there are actually a number of negatives that I'm going to recite for you, in the hopes that you don't go to Soma and I can always get a table. The main problem, of course, is the after dinner mints. They taste like poop. I've eaten a lot of after dinner mints in my life, and these have to be the grossest. They're some kind of minty, chocolately, hard candy monstrosity which combines three great characteristics of after dinner mints into something that makes angels weep. -9 The worst part is my boyfriend loves them, which leads me to wonder if this man that I am dating has any sense of taste at all.

For people like me who go to a restaurant and expect to drink several gallons of free water, they provide a bottle of water at the table so that I can serve myself. Normally this is something I like - there's nothing worse than dying of thirst because the waiter has a dozen other tables and doesn't have the time to hover at my elbow refilling my glass every three minutes. The negative is that they keep the water in these tall, beautiful wine glasses to class up the joint, and I can't look at them without feeling the sick sense of shame. One time I was dining at Johnny Carino's with my parents, and like the pig I am I went ahead and ate all the oil and garlic provided. What to do, what to do... There was a green wine bottle sitting on my table- that must be filled with more oil! There was a cork in the bottle that was wedged in pretty deeply; it took all of my strength and the encouragement of my parents to get it open. Finally free, I poured the oil into the dish only to discover - it was water! That bottle wasn't full of something I wanted to eat on bread! It was simply decorative! The damn bottle wasn't meant to be used for anything at all! To add insult to the injury, the waitress was shocked when she walked by that I was able to get the cork open at all. Not only did I not have the oil for my bread, I'd ruined what oil was left and now I had superpowers that I would forever associate with this horrible day. So I hate the green bottles at Soma (-12) and I hate superheroes, for being able to embrace what I must repress.

Here's the worst thing about Soma: the parking situation is a little fierce, the restaurant is on Washington Avenue and the other shops in the strip center have been careful to put up "Will Tow Soma Diners During Business Hours" signs. This blows big ones because it seems like you may have to valet your car. Now, my roommate is a valet, and thanks to the stories he tells when he returns home, I will never valet my car unless I can help it. So here I was, waiting to parallel park a street over, trying to get out of the parking lot, when I pull up behind a red Honda Civic parked in front of the valet line. The brake lights are on and I figure this person is waiting for a valet, so I wait patiently behind it because I'm a patient person and I don't what to run over a guy who parks cars for a living, that seems like I'll never find the karma to overtake that. I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, finally I realize - there's nobody in that freaking car! I'm just sitting here, idling, like a complete moron while other people come in and take what few parking spots are left! Ugh, it was the worst day ever. -5 So I swung around the car, struggled to fit my car into a space that was just four inches larger than my vehicle, and then went in to dine - the car was STILL THERE. It's probably there to this day! It makes me so angry because HELLO! I'm twenty three years old, I should definitely be able to tell the difference between parking brakes and regular brakes, but can you please just turn off your car? What about the environment, and our nation's dependence of foreign oil? Some people are just so inconsiderate.

That's all the information I have for you today. Please feel free to email me at arbitrarycriticism@live.com to tell me how much you missed me when I was too depressed to write - I mean, in the middle of a global fight for my life.