Trying Everything at Torihei - Torrance

My name is Kelsey and I'm a hoarder. I collect, I accumulate, I cache. I hang on to every little and every last thing, and I let nothing go. No junk too junky, no trinket too trivial, no morsel without meaning. Everything discarded is potential wasted, an opportunity missed. 

I'm not just a hoarder, I'm also a fooder. When faced with a menu, I over-order, I sample, I taste. I try every little and every last thing, and I let nothing go untasted. No ingredient too indigestible, no edibles too expensive, no skewer too strange. Everything not ordered is potential wasted, an opportunity missed. 

At Torihei, I am fooder with a menu full of inexpensive small plates and yakitori. A fooder with yakitori is like a hoarder with unlimited storage space, and in my belly, there was a place for everything and everything in its place.

Hoarding is often defined as the accumulation of the unnecessary, but I don’t just amass useless things. My 135 leftover soy sauce packets come in handy when I run out of soy sauce, which I do all the time because I’m Asian. Plus the other 355 sauce packets from Chinese restaurants are perfect I want to cover my food with something orange and gross. And clearly someone used my logic when making the Octopus and the Cabbage with ramen flavor. The octopus is a collection of octopus and random sprinkles of whatever extras were behind the sushi bar, and the cabbage was clearly covered with extra broth packets from several packs of Cup Noodles.

What’s one addition when I already have so many? Surely at least one button in the box I’ve accumulated will one day fit my favorite shirt. And when that day comes, victory will taste even sweeter than the sesame-ginger sauce on the gorgeously filleted slices of tender red Kobe Beef Carpaccio.

Despite my more useful items, my friends still give me a lot of Shit-ake Mushroom about them…especially when they have to help me pack. And maybe I do go overboard sometimes….

It is a sad day when your own roommate has to confiscate your sweater with the two irreparable holes and stuff it into her own trashcan because no matter what regrets you may have, you at least wouldn’t stoop to digging through her trash. My holey sweater may  have been holy to me, but it was about as worthless as the rubbery, not-so-fresh Garlic Squid which had little-to-no noticeable flavor except for the inexplicably bitter aftertaste.

Along similar lines, the Grilled Clams were about as fresh as that sweater and as sandy as that same sweater after a day on the beach.

I know all things shouldn’t be kept, but it breaks my heart to throw them away. But I would have been delighted to discard the excessive amount of brown sauce that drowned the Tsunagi, or “special heart”. The heart was every bit as tender and tasty as the Hatsu, or regular heart, (pictured with the tontoro), but add the all-consuming sauce, and there’s no room to savor the flavor. But there was room for tender chunks of the Beef Tongue yakatori (not pictured) because there is always room for just one more thing.

Some things are impossible to throw away, but some things are easy to stop collecting. The Tontoro, or fatty pork, has clearly spent years collecting its soft, savory, juicy tendrils of fat, and that’s stash I was happy to liquidate with every sinful bite.

Everyone has something that defines them, and everyone is allowed their quirks. The Tsukune, or the Torihei meatball, is an amazingly tasty ball of tender chicken and gooey jelly fish with a hint of contrasting cartilage makes a quirky but delicious combination, an unusual conglomeration. Unusual parts forming a cohesive whole…not so different from the charming yet seemingly nonsensical piles of oddities that fill my bedroom floor…and closet…and wall,…Right?

Whenever I think I can’t handle one more thing, I magically find the closet space, and it turns out my eyes aren’t bigger than my stomach after all. But alas, hoarding, like the Pig Feet, isn’t for everyone. If the idea of soft tender interspersed with tons of connective tissues makes you cringe, simply steer clear. And if you’re not okay with giving up your sleeping space in for just one item, then hoarding isn’t for you either.

There are treatments for hoarding, and maybe one day I'll enroll. I would have started going to meetings by now but they won't let me bring my stuff. There are treatments for fooding too, and maybe one day I’ll give them a try. I would have already started going to meetings by now but they don’t serve snacks.