No date with a guy last week. Instead, I went to dinner with two of my girlfriends at Ku Sushi and Japanese Cuisine. The sushi restaurant ranks as one of my friend's and her husband's favorite Preston and Forest neighborhood date spots. Even though it was just us girls, Ku had plenty of drama that night thanks to two couples on a double date -- giving credence to the recent article in Men's Health that Dallas is the seventh angriest city in America.
The spring weather allowed the three of us to sit outside. I wouldn't say the view from our table to the black asphalt of the Preston Forest Shopping Center parking lot was alluring or romantic, but we had wine, and that can make anything dreamy.
My girlfriends followed the sushi route while I ordered a cooked entrée. One friend ordered rice-less sushi rolls and the other chose Ku's regular California, spicy tuna and cucumber rolls. The rice-less sushi rolls looked more exotic than regular ones. My friend enjoyed her Forest Roll, which had tuna on top of a roll made with soy paper, salmon, crab meat and cream cheese. She also liked the Love Love roll that came with salmon, crab meat, avocado and tuna, but she couldn't finish both rolls.
My tasty Dolsot Bi Bim Bop arrived at our table in a sizzling stone pot. The popping and cracking of the egg frying on top of the rice, steak and vegetables alarmed the girls a bit. They got over it after I explained that Bi Bim Bop was a traditional Korean dish. (Looks like Ku serves Korean dishes, not just Japanese ones.) We didn't have any more excitement...until the fight.
The fight we witnessed (OK, initially we heard it, since it broke out inside the restaurant and Ku's tinted windows prevented us from getting a perfect view until the combatants moved outside) was almost as good as the one at my company holiday party four years ago. That brawl commenced when one of my coworkers punched the DJ after the drunk, disheveled and recently divorced DJ started coming on (really hot and heavy) to another coworker. The sushi place fight took place a little after 10 p.m. on our girls' Wednesday night out.
Two couples met and sat at Ku's sushi bar. They ordered drinks and waited a bit to place their dinner order. Who is going out for dinner on a Wednesday night at 10 p.m. in the middle of strip mall in North Dallas? Drunk people, that's who.
Now, my friends and I don't know the exact conversation that instigated the fight, but we gathered the following when the two wives rushed out of the restaurant with eyes wide: The chef told the couples that Ku closed at 10 p.m. but if they placed their food order before a certain time they'd be served; the couples didn't order their food before 10 p.m., they only got drinks; and then the husbands in the group got angry. (One angrier than the other, drunker one. Let's call him Hurly Burly.) That's when the screaming started. Hurly Burly admonished the staff and chef for letting the four of them sit down, order drinks and then not take their dinner order. When the wives opened the restaurant's doors, the parking lot echoed with Hurly Burly's rants about how one of the restaurant's staff had threatened to hurt him. Then Hurly Burly exited the restaurant yelling: "I'm about to go with this guy."
At this point, our dinner got worse or got better, depending on your point of view. Either way, the fighting interrupted our wine drinking and girly chatter. The less drunk husband and his wife got in their car and left. Hurly and his wife stuck around. He paced around the restaurant's entrance seething and itching for a fight. His wife hovered by their car but never got in. Ku's chef came outside, sat down at the table next to us, and next thing we know Hurly Burly is shouting again, "You want to go?" and "Let's go," to the chef.
As Hurly Burly got louder, my girlfriends got annoyed -- one because we couldn't finish our drinks in peace and the other because this was her quiet, little, local, date place, not a backdrop for an episode of Cheaters. One of my friends threatened to call the police if the couple didn't leave, while my other friend tried to empathize with them about not getting to eat and suggested another restaurant still open nearby. While all this talking went on, I searched for a pen so I could copy down their license plate for when they eventually drove away. I'm not sure why having their license plate number would be helpful, but I'm not a witness to many altercations and it felt like a good idea at the time.
When Hurly Burly realized no one would brawl with him, he grew bored. And not willing to deal with the impending citizen's arrest, he and his wife finally left, with him muttering how he "still tipped out at 20 percent" for their drinks even though they never got dinner.
Ku Sushi and Japanese Cuisine 11661 Preston Road, No.160 214-891-0400
