Pizza, chicken and sushi?
Yep, you heard right – sushi. Tucked into the far corner of the Culp Center’s Atrium Food Court, to the left of Chik-fil-A, is an honest-to-Buddha sushi joint.
Southern Tsunami, ETSU’s first sushi bar, opened last week, bringing low-fat, high-protein fare to this fast-food jungle of a campus.
“We’ve sold about 70-80 packages of sushi per day,” said Kyaw (pronounced “Joe”) Wai, who helps manage the restaurant with his mother, Khin San Mu, or Mu Mu. “So far, most people like the California rolls,” he said, referring to the bite-size portions of rice, crab meat, cucumber, avocado and sesame neatly wrapped in a seaweed ribbon.
Indeed, the California rolls, vegetarian rolls and cream cheese rolls will probably always have more mass appeal than the less-cooked sushi items most people tend to shy away from – like the snapper and tuna rolls. But that just means the masses are missing out on a tasty, nutritious alternative to fried chicken sandwiches.
“They’re pretty good,” said Karl Gibson, a junior in Digital Media, who sampled both the shrimp roll and the cream cheese roll. “I’d eat them again. A whole order would be filling.”
As an added bonus, the side of wasabi, a spicy green mustard, cleared his sinus cavities, which had been stopped up for the past few days.
But here’s the best part: Did you know that nine California rolls have only 290 calories, 7 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat? Not too shabby for $4.65.
Go ahead. Try it for yourself. Southern Tsunami is located on the second floor of the D.P. Culp Center in the Atrium. It’s open from 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
They accept the meal plan, Advantage, Dining Dollars, IDBuc$ and, of course, cash.

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