I know that this is a low-effort observation but what stuck out to me in that story was "Dave's sushi in Bozeman". Like, there are some red flags just in that name.
That not a lot of people in Bozeman eat sushi, and not a lot of people named Dave run sushi restaurants. Bozeman is closer to the bluefin than Chicago is, and Chicago has excellent Japanese restaurants; it's not (directly) a geographical observation.
It calls to mind Show Biz Sushi from King of the Hill.
Dave's is about as non-sushi of a name as I can imagine for a sushi restaurant, I agree. Having eaten there many times (much to my chagrin), it's a pretty down-to-earth, not very fancy, not particularly high quality restaurant. But it has been the for 20+ years.
There are newer sushi places in town that are much fancier, and have fancy trendy names to match, such as "Seven".
As mentioned in other comments, all sushi fish in the US must be frozen for 7 days to kill parasites, so there's no such thing as "fresh" sushi here. That said, you can get day-of fresh fish in Bozeman - it's flown in a few times a week from Seattle, and is quite pricey. A friend of mine has built a business delivering it to restaurants in the morning.
That's all sushi. Even in Japan. Sushi Grade means it was frozen long enough and deeply enough to kill parasites, versus the standard grades which are kept cold, but aren't frozen at all.
Right, I assume whatever Chicago does to get good fish, Bozeman can do too. It's more a question of what the turnover is like in a Bozeman sushi restaurant. And to be clear: it's mostly just snark! I said it was a low-effort comment! :)
(It's very neat that you have an eyewitness report of actually being there.)
Your animus is showing. Bozeman is an affluent college town near a ski resort with real estate prices at California levels. Besides, it's 2024 and for about two decades now even dirtbags in the US have eaten sushi. You can buy sushi at Walmart and "gas station sushi" is not just a punch line.
I lived in the region for some years and never encountered any seafood that I thought was fit to eat. Eventually I stopped ordering it, and turning it down when it was offered to me.
I didn't go to the super-expensive places that have it flown in daily. Those might be okay, but the stuff in normal Chicagoland restaurants and grocery stores is just plain nasty.
