Something's Fishy

It's no secret that I have an unnatural affinity for drug stores (travel size items are my weakness). So when Duane Reade -- New York's hometown drugstore -- opened a two-story mega location that's open 24 hours here in Chelsea last month, I knew I was in for trouble. While I was mesmerized by the first-floor grocer, the press was aghast over the sushi offerings -- with critics saying it was probably a good thing that there was a litany of medicines available for the inevitable ailments that would befall anyone brave enough to eat it. Well, I'm not the bravest person around, but I'm also no food snob. (My two rules for food: predictable and cheap.) So being the sushi lover that I have grown to be, I decided to give it a whirl on the way home from work the other night, hoping it would be worthy addition to my 1 a.m. ritual of scouring for "dinner." (It ain't easy, trust me.) Things started off a little rocky when I brought my salmon and spicy tuna roll selection to the cash register and it inexplicably rang up as a dollar less than the price tag. (Was this stuff old? I guess buying packaged food on a Sunday night was asking for trouble. Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto rated DR sushi a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, but only if it's eaten on the day it was made.) But when I got home I realized it had "prepared" and "eat by" dates on it, and it was in fact made that day. Although I should have waited for it to get a little less cold (refrigeration makes the rice a little too firm but I was really hungry -- hungry enough to buy sushi from a drug store!), I found it to be perfectly delicious. The salmon was fresh and flavorful (Morimoto agrees), and the tuna rolls had a nice kick to them. As predicted, it was no worse (or better) than the prepared sushi sold at hundreds of bodegas all over the city. Did it pass my test? Well, I had again twice since Sunday and no, it had nothing to do why I was under the weather yesterday (unless cheap sushi causes sinus congestion!).