One of the Greatest Cheat Days in My Life

               Sports are everything to me. I love exercising and I am interested in many sports such as basketball, wrestling, volleyball and weight training. I always have dreamed of having a healthy muscular body one day so I started to plan my exercise routine and my diet.  Since then, I have started to go to the gym six days a week and I eat healthy every single day, except Sunday. I usually go out and eat with friends on Sunday. This is an idea that I got from the bodybuilding world.  The day when you don’t eat healthily and eat whatever you want is called the cheat day.  In my case, my cheat day is Sunday.  It was on that day that I had my first taste of sushi at “Sake Restaurant,” a sushi buffet restaurant in Brooklyn, New York.

One particular cheat day, during my sophomore year in high school, my friends Steven and Ryan invited me to join them at a sushi buffet restaurant. The restaurant is located on the corner of 86th street, 23rd avenue. When my friends and I arrived at the restaurant we were surprised by the amount of people who were waiting outside. It took us 30 minutes of waiting to get in the restaurant.  I didn’t think it was worth it to wait that long for food. We finally got into the restaurant and it was so crowded that it felt like I entered the subway during rush hour.  My friends ordered a bunch of sushi, which was very new to me. Finally, a well-known appetizer at “Sake” is the “Kani Salad,” and this was my first experience of tasting a Japanese-style salad. It is nothing like a regular salad that someone could get from Subway or McDonald’s or any other places someone could get a salad.  Kani salad is a mix of vegetable and crab meat.  We were surprised by it’s flavor and texture. This combination of texture and flavor made us feel that we discovered something new and special.

When I ate the Kani salad I felt like I did something crazy in the gym and it was fun. On one hand, it felt like I invented a new exercise that works me out well and it makes me want to work harder. On the other hand, the salad makes me have wanted to discover more from this restaurant and finally the sushi rolls we ordered came. The dish contains different types of sushi rolls such as the tempura roll, California roll, eel, salmon, and tuna, and many other rolls. Each sushi roll has its own flavor and texture. The tempura roll is my favorite because of it’s ingredients. It is wrapped up with fried shrimp, rice, avocado, and tempura sauce on top of the roll and this satisfies me with a taste that I love. The flavor reminds me about when I won my first wrestling tournament. During my first year of practicing wrestling, it was scary. I didn’t know too much about this sport. I practiced my butt off every day so that I would be prepared for every match. As a result, I won my first tournament. This made me believe that all the hard work was worth it and it made me want to work harder. Eating the shrimp tempura roll is just like the rewards of my wrestling career. Just like winning the tournament, when I ate my first sushi roll ever and I loved it. It made me realize how important food is and how amazing it could be. It also changed my lifestyle that sometimes I would give myself a day off to go out with my friends for foods that we had never tried.

After we finished eating the sushi rolls, we ordered some ice cream and cakes for dessert. We couldn’t finish the dessert because we were already full at that time. We decided to walk home instead of taking the train because it’s better for the food in our full stomach to digest. At that moment when we were walking home, we already thought about where we could go next week and try something that is even more exciting. My first time eating sushi had turned me into a connoisseur. It brought me to another level in life and it was probably the one of the most enjoyable moments in my life just like when I had won my wrestling matches.

Although I still eat healthily and being strict on my diet, my life had been changed forever. Before, I was not much interested about food and didn’t think food could be that amazing. The event made me realize that food is not just to feed your stomach but also could be enjoyable. After my first experience in Sake, I had a better understanding about food.  I would travel from Brooklyn to Queens or Manhattan to just give it a try on the well known restaurant. I became a connoisseur and I love to try food that is from different countries.