Today my mother and her friend came to visit Doc and me in the Mission, and since my mother is vegan we went to Shizen Vegan Sushi Bar & Izakaya over on 14th street. It is a new restaurant in a new building, and we hadn’t actually even heard of it until we researched places we could go.
One of the fun experiences we had at Shizen was ordering the “Surprise Ending” roll. This roll is served with 6 pieces of identical-looking beet sushi. While 5 of them are cool and mild, one of them is extremely spicy. Whoever gets the spicy piece gets to drink the shot of sake in the middle of the plate as… a prize? I guess?
I actually got the spicy roll, and it was indeed very spicy. But not THAT bad. It wasn’t “I got covered in ghost pepper sauce and forgot to wash my hands” bad or anything. I’ve been trying to identify the spice source, and I think it was a kind of pepper (it was definitely not horseradish or wasabi or anything like that). It was also kind of vinegary. I’m not sure beyond that.
Neither my mother nor her friend can stand even the mildest of spices, so we didn’t expect them to participate, but they did! They were both thankful that they didn’t get the spicy one, and I was grateful that I got to have the sake and the spicy roll, so I guess everybody won. Except Doc, who also kind of wanted to taste the spicy one. Next time, Doc!
Since capsaicin is alcohol soluble I expect the sake to also have a palliative effect 🙂
That’s a good point.