Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Indio Sushi


My friend Hugh is like the male version of me. He likes show tunes, is often mistaken for gay because of his knowledge of swing dancing and non-top 40 cultural icons, (which I am occasionally mistaken for because of my knowledge of 70’s disco classics), he enjoys coming to the opera with me, as does his goddess of a wife Jeni and his little less-than-a-year-old son Lincoln who is my current boyfriend of choice, and he enjoys a good drag show. But we also share a love of food. One of the best gorgonzola chicken salads ever was served to me at one of his weekly family dinners where I, by proxy of adoption, am permanently granted entry. We also share a love of a Palm Desert dive lounge lizard bar called Casey’s which serves up piano-bar style soul nearing twelve midnight on any given good night where an aged b-actress or two waits her turn to belt out the blues.

In any case, I don’t have regularly scheduled hours with Hugh. No formal meetings or occasions on the calendar set months in advance like everything else, with him it’s more impromptu. His wife knows I am one of the guys, so when we slip out for a glass of some fine liquid or decide that we are going to train for the Palm Springs marathon next year together, she just sighs her sigh, and thinks, “thank god he’s got someone to play with him who I love too.”

Today, it was sushi in Indio at Frankie’s. Now to any other person reading this blog, they might think sushi at Frankie’s sounds not so out of the ordinary but to those of us who live in the Coachella Valley (an area far enough away from the sea that most people don’t trust sushi unless it’s No Da Te on El Paseo which serves up a $25 all you can eat sushi deal every summer to loyal locals), we know that you can not find good sushi most places.

Then, there are what I call the low down places like Joe’s Sushi in Palm Desert near the 1-10 freeway—always packed, always fresh, always cheap and the coolest chefs ever and when you are in the mood for ghetto strip mall kind of Sunday afternoon deal-down-round-the corner -meal, with hot sake of course, it’s perfection.

But if you think of the simplicity of good Mexican food and the only caveat being fresh implementation, it’s not that far away of a hop, skip and jump to sushi—simply done in the standard and true-blue styles of spider roll, spicy tuna hand wrap and of course, hot salted edamame.

We discussed the upcoming social season, the silly things we buy with money, the downsizing of our generation to build a kinder, gentler (and more show-tuned filled kind of culture) bi-partisan human race, and ate until we were too full to finish…

3 comments:

  1. I'm loving your new blog! I'm reading this on a very full stomach- lamb and mom's apple pie tonight.

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  2. love you..but , oh, you already know that :)

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  3. is Hugh too cute or what? now i know where to eat if i make it to California!

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