I knew it was going to be a good meal when the waitress said to Charlotte “Oh, are you a vegetarian? Then you can’t eat in our restaurant. You can’t eat Japanese food, in any restaurant in the world.” Things got better from there.

When the We Like Food group decided to go to Sumo Lounge (Eau Claire Mall, Calgary), the only people who were actually able to make it were people who’d never been before; Sumo virgins, if you will (and take a moment to savour that image, please).

Getting our table was actually pretty easy. Charlotte had booked a table for six earlier in the day, and even though Sumo was going to be suffering a 40-person booking that same night, and told us we would have to have two smaller tables, we still managed to get in and get seated together – it’s worth noting at this point that she also asked about vegetarian alternatives at the sushi bar, only to be directed to the table-and-menu section instead, making the waitress’s comments above that much stranger. Parking was apparently a pain in the ass, as downtown parking often is.

Christina and her friend Lisa arrived first, me next, Charlotte, Jess, and Ryan coming together afterwards. Before the rest of us started arriving, Christina and Lisa ordered Jasmine tea, only to be rebuffed (yes, by the same waitress). “It’s a Japanese restaurant,” she said, “not Chinese.” Because apparently the Jasmine flower doesn’t grow in Japan. They didn’t bother arguing the point, and just ordered tea and water.  When I arrived, the table was bare, except for menus.

Once we all settled in and started passing around menus, we encountered the sticking point about the lack of vegetarian options on the menu. Eventually, the waitress relented, and admitted that although sushi restaurants are not VEGAN-friendly, as the veggie stuff is cooked in the same grill as the fish, vegetarians who are not too picky will be able to get by with tempura and veggie rolls.

Finally, out of nowhere, the tea appeared, with three plastic teacups. Let’s do the math: two people ordered tea, six people are sitting; one would assume that either two or six would be the right number of cups. Maybe the waitress was just showing off her mad factoring skillz. I ordered water, as did a few others; some of us for the second time.

Service was fairly quick, and soon the table was laden down with varieties of fish, rice, veggies, and drinks. Which is when Christina asked if anyone else’s water smelled like cat pee. After passing the offending drink around and concurring that it had an offensive odour, it was determined that the smell was stale beer, the glass having not been thoroughly cleaned. At that time I took out the notebook, to ensure that the waitress got the impression that we were writing a restaurant review. My water was fine, for the record.

Anyway, the food: it’s decent. Sushi is kinda hard to screw up. I had sashimi, which was a mistake on my part. I wanted sushi, but not maki, and so I overcorrected. It was good, though, and was served on a bed of coils of radish, which are really yummy with soy sauce and wasabi. It came quickly enough, and nobody left the table hungry, for what I would guess was an average investment of $20-$25 per person, which is standard for sushi. To be honest, for the majority of what I ate, it was only moderately better than the little platters you can get at Safeway (which sounds like an insult, but the Safeway sushi is getting better as time goes on).

There were enough of us that we tried pretty near everything on the menu. Of course, we didn’t get access to the piece-menu (standard in sushi restaurants, where you can pick individual pieces, rather than getting a platter) until we’d already all ordered, and other than Charlotte, nobody was even offered one.

The seaweed wrap on the maki was really dry and chewy, and had clearly been sitting out for a while. I can’t get my head around why a busy restaurant (it was pretty much packed when we were there) wouldn’t make fresh rolls on a Friday night.

The conversation was good, especially when Christina busted out her various computer stories, which were sadly not food-related, and so will not be repeated here. We were clearly infected by the atmosphere of the place, since we kept coming back to fish: how a vegetarian eating fish was less like a straight person watching gay porn, and more like that person giving oral to a person of the same sex; how dating site Plenty of Fish gives limited options at best; some kind of sex act called “starfishing” (which is less gross than you’re thinking, but I’m not going to tell you what it really is, because I want you to be tormented by your sick mind).

We had a few more questions: why did a table reserved for six only come with three soy dishes? Perhaps it was related to three teacups; maybe our waitress had an OCD thing for threes. When we asked for more teacups and more soy dishes, we ended up with about ten or twelve of each.

When we tried to leave, it took ten minutes of standing in the entryway before anyone would actually take our money, although all standard payment options are available.

Overall, I probably won’t be going to Sumo Lounge again. There was nothing distinctly wrong with it, except for the insane waitress, but it didn’t have anything about it that was good enough to make me choose it over the numerous other sushi options out there.

I’d say:

Service 2/5 (prompt but barely-sentient)
Food 3/5 (pedestrian)