"Have I been here?" is a pretty standard question for Rihanna Gaga to ask whenever we go somewhere. Now that we're back in Scheveningen, she's fascinated by the notion that there are all these places here that seem new, but that we apparently know. "When you were a little baby, we went here with you" is a remark that always piques her interest.
Sumo is one of these places, although we don't really nurture fond memories of it. I think Rihanna Gaga was about three months old when we were here the last time and we got seriously ill afterwards, spending the day in bed with food poisoning while a bored three months old demanded our attention. So when, on Boxing Day, we felt like eating sushi, Sumo wasn't our first choice. However, the other option - Kyoto - was closed, so we had to decide whether our craving for sushi was stronger than our three year old memories.Sushi won. Not all restaurants are open: it's boxing day. Yesterday and the day before we spent celebrating Christmas with my own and my girlfriend's families and there is no food in the house left, so that we have to eat out today.
Lunch is a tricky meal to have with Rihanna Gaga. In ideal circumstances, she'd have her afternoon nap around 11:30, so that's she's ready to go to lunch around 13:00. However, she's moved her afternoon nap to later in the afternoon recently, because she normally sleeps around 12:30 at her daycare. So then, lunch has to take place around 12:00, so that she won't be too tired before the end of it. She's on her kick scooter, and her mother - who has joined us for lunch this Monday - and I walk alongside her. She's looking forward to eating fish.
Sumo has an 'all you can eat' concept, although there is a limit to what people are allowed to eat: six rounds of four sushi dishes per person, with children younger than 4 eating for free. The decoration is a Western fantasy of Japan: lots of shiny things, with the walls covered in red and black floral patterns, plastic cherry trees with pink cherry blossoms. Rihanna Gaga wants to sit on one of the couches, but all the tables with couches are reserved. We sit down at a smaller table instead and she gets a toddler chair, in which she sits down, much to our surprise: normally she refuses to sit in those.
The first round brings lots of salmon and tuna. Rihanna Gaga prefers the salmon, which she picks of the rice base and eats before starting on the rice base. The dish she chose herself is left untouched, while she devours several of our sushi rolls instead. Soon, however, she's had enough. We continue to eat. Sushi, you'd say, is sushi: how much variety can there be between one mix of sticky rice, raw fish and seaweed and the other. But there is a difference. I guess it has to do with the freshness: the salmon and tuna served her are definitely of less quality than at last week's The Harbour Club, and the squid that I have a few rounds later tastes as if it has been defrosted. It's not like the sushi here is not nice - it is - but it's certainly not outstanding either. But anyway: one should not expect too much from an 'all you can eat' place. That goes for the patrons as well, most of whom look as if they normally eat at snackbars. Next to us sits a seriously overweight family, with the mother looking mostly
at her phone and making harsh remarks to her kids whenever they leave the two dvd screens placed in front of them to do something else. Christmas songs are playing on the radio, from old crooners, to more recent pop songs, including a crappy cover version of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" - an insult to George Michael, who died today.
At a certain moment, Rihanna Gaga has to pee and I take her to the toilet. This is the low point of the place: dirty, greyish white tiled walls, toilets that are out of work are covered in blue plastic and the ones that do work don't look very clean. Memories of what happened here three years ago come rushing back and I make sure both me and Rihanna Gaga wash our hands thoroughly.
Back at the table, I give Rihanna Gaga some pencils and paper to draw, which she does enthusiastically, ignoring the food that keeps coming. Then, I have to draw for her and her demands are slightly bizarre: first I have to draw green lines, then brown dots, followed by orange forks and yellow spoons. She loses interest while I'm working on the spoons, because now she wants her mother's phone to draw on. When she's done so for a little while, she tells me she's tired. This is a critical phase: either she starts wallowing in the feeling that she's tired and wants something to be done about it, or she bounces back after a while and becomes cheerful again. I tell her to sit on my lap, which after some whining she does, and then I tell her a story about the mouse and the crocodile. She asks the story to be about the mouse and the crocodile going to visit her friend in Tunisia, who turns out to be ill, after which one of Rihanna Gaga's grandfathers - who actually used to be a doctor - is called upon to help out with the belly ache of this friend. The story is enticing enough to put Rihanna Gaga in a better mood and soon she's quite cheerful again. We decide not to push our luck - and three rounds really is enough, even though we could go for another three - and ask for the bill. The prospect of soon being in bed helps Rihanna Gaga to hurry up and soon we're on our way back home.
Sumo is one of these places, although we don't really nurture fond memories of it. I think Rihanna Gaga was about three months old when we were here the last time and we got seriously ill afterwards, spending the day in bed with food poisoning while a bored three months old demanded our attention. So when, on Boxing Day, we felt like eating sushi, Sumo wasn't our first choice. However, the other option - Kyoto - was closed, so we had to decide whether our craving for sushi was stronger than our three year old memories.Sushi won. Not all restaurants are open: it's boxing day. Yesterday and the day before we spent celebrating Christmas with my own and my girlfriend's families and there is no food in the house left, so that we have to eat out today. Lunch is a tricky meal to have with Rihanna Gaga. In ideal circumstances, she'd have her afternoon nap around 11:30, so that's she's ready to go to lunch around 13:00. However, she's moved her afternoon nap to later in the afternoon recently, because she normally sleeps around 12:30 at her daycare. So then, lunch has to take place around 12:00, so that she won't be too tired before the end of it. She's on her kick scooter, and her mother - who has joined us for lunch this Monday - and I walk alongside her. She's looking forward to eating fish.
Sumo has an 'all you can eat' concept, although there is a limit to what people are allowed to eat: six rounds of four sushi dishes per person, with children younger than 4 eating for free. The decoration is a Western fantasy of Japan: lots of shiny things, with the walls covered in red and black floral patterns, plastic cherry trees with pink cherry blossoms. Rihanna Gaga wants to sit on one of the couches, but all the tables with couches are reserved. We sit down at a smaller table instead and she gets a toddler chair, in which she sits down, much to our surprise: normally she refuses to sit in those.
The first round brings lots of salmon and tuna. Rihanna Gaga prefers the salmon, which she picks of the rice base and eats before starting on the rice base. The dish she chose herself is left untouched, while she devours several of our sushi rolls instead. Soon, however, she's had enough. We continue to eat. Sushi, you'd say, is sushi: how much variety can there be between one mix of sticky rice, raw fish and seaweed and the other. But there is a difference. I guess it has to do with the freshness: the salmon and tuna served her are definitely of less quality than at last week's The Harbour Club, and the squid that I have a few rounds later tastes as if it has been defrosted. It's not like the sushi here is not nice - it is - but it's certainly not outstanding either. But anyway: one should not expect too much from an 'all you can eat' place. That goes for the patrons as well, most of whom look as if they normally eat at snackbars. Next to us sits a seriously overweight family, with the mother looking mostly
at her phone and making harsh remarks to her kids whenever they leave the two dvd screens placed in front of them to do something else. Christmas songs are playing on the radio, from old crooners, to more recent pop songs, including a crappy cover version of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" - an insult to George Michael, who died today.
At a certain moment, Rihanna Gaga has to pee and I take her to the toilet. This is the low point of the place: dirty, greyish white tiled walls, toilets that are out of work are covered in blue plastic and the ones that do work don't look very clean. Memories of what happened here three years ago come rushing back and I make sure both me and Rihanna Gaga wash our hands thoroughly.
Back at the table, I give Rihanna Gaga some pencils and paper to draw, which she does enthusiastically, ignoring the food that keeps coming. Then, I have to draw for her and her demands are slightly bizarre: first I have to draw green lines, then brown dots, followed by orange forks and yellow spoons. She loses interest while I'm working on the spoons, because now she wants her mother's phone to draw on. When she's done so for a little while, she tells me she's tired. This is a critical phase: either she starts wallowing in the feeling that she's tired and wants something to be done about it, or she bounces back after a while and becomes cheerful again. I tell her to sit on my lap, which after some whining she does, and then I tell her a story about the mouse and the crocodile. She asks the story to be about the mouse and the crocodile going to visit her friend in Tunisia, who turns out to be ill, after which one of Rihanna Gaga's grandfathers - who actually used to be a doctor - is called upon to help out with the belly ache of this friend. The story is enticing enough to put Rihanna Gaga in a better mood and soon she's quite cheerful again. We decide not to push our luck - and three rounds really is enough, even though we could go for another three - and ask for the bill. The prospect of soon being in bed helps Rihanna Gaga to hurry up and soon we're on our way back home. 
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