GoJo

Work has been a bit crazy lately and we have all been putting in extra hours to get the new site fine-tuned… So the head of the department decided to take ‘the team’ out to dinner last night as a kind of thank you (which was pretty cool of him).

Everyone decides to go to a Japanese Steakhouse called GoJo… Anyone who knows me would tell you that this would not be my cup of tea, but last night I decided to attack my food pickiness with gorilla warfare. I told no one that I was nervous about going there. I told no one that I have been freaking out a little bit about having to go.I told no one that I have been to one of these places before and had a terrible time.

GoJo’s is the typical setup: half circle tables with the cooking surface in the center and chairs along the outside. You get drinks (I had a Japanese beer), order your meal … About 5 minutes later a little soup comes out. It looked and tasted like chicken noodle to me. The main part of this sentence is that I TASTED IT and no one noticed that I was half-freaking out inside… It wasn’t bad.

The next thing that came out was the weird little salad… I have to admit that this is the part of the meal that I am truly stretching the word ‘tried’… I looked at it.. wanted to push it away.. Pulled it back towards me and tried the salad dressing.. I KNOW! .. Cheating.. but it’s a start.

Next up is the shrimp… This is when I think I make up for the cheating in round two: The ethnic (Mexican) cook enters, plops a huge pile of shrimp on the grill and squirts it with all kinds of who-knows-what juices and sauces. This is when I start to envision him throwing shrimp at me.. Me ducking.. everyone laughing.. me having to explain why I have never eaten shrimp (which is basically no-reason).. me being labeled the ‘picky’ guy.. and becoming the face of all hatred that non-picky people have for picky people… ANYWAY, I decided this is the moment. This is the time that I step up to the plate. I actively try to make a change… The shrimp are thrown into bowls, a HUGE fire erupts in front of me for 3 seconds, the chef places a bowl in front of me and raises the ante by putting some weird yellow sauce all over the shrimp.. I almost tapped out of the shrimp challenge, but in the end decided that I would at least try one of the less drenched shrimp… I eat it without thinking. Not bad. I eat another. I eat the entire bowl of shrimp… It was pretty good. Apparently yellow sauce is liquid crack-cocaine.

The rest of the meal was a breeze. Steak and chicken. Both where very good. Picked through the mushrooms (not ready for THAT challenge yet).

It feels good to be (slightly) less picky today than I was yesterday… Maybe I will try something new today.