Fuji in Fort McMurray for Sunday mining memories

Sunday lunch as a kid was roast chicken bursting with pork-sausage stuffing.  The family gathered with grandparents: my grandmother a housewife, my grandfather an armature winder on the local mine.  (The photo above is of an old advert for an armature winder.)

Today’s Sunday lunch was a solitary affair in a Japanese restaurant in Fort McMurray.  In the old days, I doubt we even knew there was a place called Japan, net alone that they had a cuisine so different from the roast chicken, roast potatoes, and yorkshire pudding fatty variety we loved. 

Now-a-days I still love chicken, roast and teriyaki.  So at the Fuji Japanese Restaurant I ordered my conventional Japanese favorite, a Bento Box.  How can you resist those tender strips of chicken on white rice, thinly-sliced vegetables in light sashimi batter, and a few sushi pieces of soft, sensuous raw fish.  I can live without the sop to western tastes, namely the cold, tasteless lettuce with a pink sauce, or the lump of broccoli, or the wedge of carrot. 

Service at the Fuji Japanese Restaurant was genuine Japanese obsequious: backwards moving, bowing, and reserved.  They are Japanese afterall.   

The surroundings are like so much in Fort McMurray: kind of basic; a bit battered; makeshift posters for Asahi beer; begging for a good scrub actually although clean [you hope.]  And the location is terrible:  a dull, dreary strip shopping mall.  When will they ban those as an aesthetic affront, a violation of human decency, an environmental disaster?

I admit that the best restaurant I know is in another dreary strip mall.  I refer to Pascals in Orange County, CA.  But there the California sun, basic flowers, and fresh paint mitigate the potential horror.  And once inside the promise of the best French food anywhere diverts attention from location.   The Fiji is just not in a class sufficient to divert attention from location. 

It appears to be popular with the well-dressed crowd.  A Church group including beautifully dressed women and men in suits and ties arrived to enter a private room of true Japanese style for an after-worship meal.  How to worship or eat with a tie is something I have thankfully long forgotten. 

But I won’t forget the restaurant.  In fact I will probably go back, even though it is not truly memorable. 

As always, I paid for my meal.  They had no idea this piece was forming in my head while I ate.  So they are innocent; only I am guilty of judgement.