The Delicate Art of Sake Bombing

I had dinner tonight in a downtown Palo Alto sushi joint called Miyake's, which while not being my first sushi experience, nor even my first Miyake's, was quite entertaining!

Let me explain the difference between East Coast and West Coast sake bombing (or what I've observed so far of it): The East Coast style involves delicately balancing your sake on a pair of chopsticks suspended on top of your beer, while the West Coast style involves delicately balancing yourself on top of your chair (standing) while holding the sake inside of the beer glass. In the East, you bang on the tables and yell "Sake Sake Sake Bomb!", while in the West, it becomes a participatory game between you and your waiters:

Waitor: Sake
You: BOMB!
Watier: Sake!
You: BOMB!
...
and then you drink.

At West-Coast Miyake's, as soon as someone yelled Sake Bomb! the lights dimmed, disco lights came up, and dance music started playing -- someone even turned on a fog machine.

So which is better?

The East Coast version, obviously :-P It requires more skill to balance your sake on chopsticks, the table-banging incorporates the chant into the actual drinking event, and no one breaks their neck. Those West Coast sake bomb cowboys are just crazy ;)

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On another note, the Palo Alto restaurant also had special rolls for many of the companies in the area: You could order Microsoft, Cisco, HP, IBM, Apple, Google and Sun rolls, to name a few. Yes, Neil tried a Cisco, and I tried a Google.