What I Ate: September 11, 2009 (Shogun Sushi)

Lunch: Tina cooked up some farfalle pasta with the last of my jarred meat sauce. She also cooked collard greens and toasted sliced French bread with olive oil, shaved parmigiano reggiano, and salt.

Dinner: We had tickets to Ballroom With A Twist, so we headed into town and tried to figure out where we could eat relatively quickly. I stopped in at Shogun Sushi (1807 Slaughter Ln W # 225, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 292-1580‎) and let them know we were in a rush to a show and had to leave before 7:30pm. It was 6:55pm and I wasn't so sure they could accommodate, but our server said it wouldn't be a problem. The next time she came back we placed our order: gyoza, crab shumai, sake nigiri, maguro nigiri, hamachi nigiri, unagi nigiri, and an alligator roll (eel with salmon).

The gyoza and crab shumai arrived within minutes. They were both clearly frozen from a factory that makes these things. Both had fillings that were mushy and soggy as well as bland. The skin of the gyoza was okay. Don't order these.

After we finished off the gyoza and shumai, the wait began. Taking a look around the restaurant, I noticed it was quite empty for a Friday night - one couple at the sushi bar, one couple behind us, and a family of four in the back. Twenty minutes later, we still didn't have our sushi. I flagged the server down and asked if the sushi was coming soon or should I pay for the food we had eaten already, reminding her we had to leave. She asked the sushi chef who said it would only be two more minutes before she finished the sushi for my table and the other couple "together". Five minutes later, when the other table received their sushi, I went back to figure out how we were going to leave the restaurant. Our server asked the sushi chef how much longer and she said she was "cutting right now". I said, we were out of time and we'd need it to go. It was another couple minutes (of standing by the register) before our server was able to run my credit card. She was running all over the place - but as far as I could tell, not accomplishing much. It was one of those times when you see someone earnestly trying to work fast, but just wasn't being very efficient. Finally, we got our sushi and left - eating it in the car without wasabi or soy sauce (for fear of getting our theater clothes dirty). It was hard to tell if the food was any good. The fish all tasted very bland to me - but that may have had to do with the lack of soy sauce and wasabi (like eating meat without salt). I did like the rice quite a bit.

I know it was my fault for showing up with only 35 minutes to eat, but the restaurant should be aware how much time it would take to dine there. It also seems that if they are only 10% full, they should be able to prepare food a little faster than what we saw today.