The (surprisingly recent) closure of Chris Webber’s Sacramento sports-staurant presumably dealt a serious blow to the food scene in California’s capital, but that’s sort of the market at work, isn’t it? A long-departed power forward’s sports grill(e?) can be good for what it is, but it’s not the sort of thing that can keep up with a restaurant created by a professional chef/TV personality/”food dude” (sorry) like Guy Fieri. Admittedly, I’m reaching for a way to rope some sort of CSTB-relevance onto this pretty funny blog post about visiting Fieri’s Sacramento flagship restaurant, which is called — and I apologize for this, too — Tex Wasabi’s Rock-N-Roll Sushi BBQ.
Fieri doesn’t really have any concrete connection to our ostensible focus here at CSTB — I mean, crazy people dress up like him and go to Royals games sometimes, but that hardly counts. Still, we do have a “Food” tag, and we have actually covered Sad Food Stories pretty well in the past — if Dustin Pedroia’s name winds up on some supermarket salsa, if Charles Oakley makes chili on the Internet, if the topic of bad sports-themed restaurants or spectator-sport overeating needs coverage, we have been there. Also, I have a vexing, masochistic fascination with Fieri’s grease-powered Human Hindenburg routine, and felt compelled to share. So:
I actually have to say the inside of Tex Wasabi’s was pretty kick ass. A completely tasteless mish-mosh of cheap Asian influenced knick-knacks bought at the local Cost Plus World Market, interspersed with random cowboy hats, whips, horsey saddles and chaps n’ shit. Kind of like P.F. Chang’s meets The S.F. Eagle. There were TV’s EVERYWHERE broadcasting various episodes of Guy’s many highly rated Food Network shows, except one HUGE TV in the middle of the room that had Rush Hour 2 on a loop. Blasting on the radio? Well the soulful blues styling of Stevie Ray Vaughn of course! The waitresses were all very helpful and sweet and all looked like they were on some sort of rockabilly roller-derby team.
I asked my lovely waitress to just bring me whatever the most popular dish was and she brought me, and I’m seriously about to barf just thinking about it, a roll of sushi called The Screaming Gobbler described as such: ‘Roasted turkey, jalapenos, pepper jack, avocados, green onions, mayonnaise and sriracha mayonnaise wrapped in sushi rice and tapioca paper. First you™ll gobble, then you™ll scream.’
It ends about as well as you’d imagine; the post has many visual elements, from an animated .gif of the Tex Wasabi logo to a photo of GF onstage with his band (?) in a tuxedo t-shirt, so it might be worth the click-through. Link found via Maura Johnston’s Tumblr. So I guess… thanks?