Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re on a boat. Filled with sushi. And your sole responsibility is to feed. As fast as possible. Until night falls.

Sound too good to be true? Well…it is too good to be true. But at the Shabu-Ya restaurant in Harvard Square, you can come pretty close. Rather than you being on a boat, you can order a giant boat filled with sushi, which dominates the table, upon which you can feast to your heart’s content. But what is this? To your left, you suddenly notice that the next table has ordered a similar boat. Your eyes meet. There is a moment of indecision. And then, without a word spoken, the race is on.

Some may wonder if a food as rich and delicate as sushi should be rushed through, and whether instead it should be savored. Friends, there is a time to savor sushi, much as there is a time for joy, a time when the age of men may end, and a time to sleep. But, my friends, I assure you that it is not this time. When you look to your left and see a sushi boat, it is not this time. This is the time when proper decorum is put aside, when chopsticks become secondary to sheer will, and when the only thing that matters is not the art of your form but the size of your appetite.

And so we raced on, long into the 8pm, and in the end, it did not matter who won or lost. All that mattered was that the table was clean, and we were satiated. In a sushi boat race, everyone is truly a winner.

There comes a time in every reporter’s life when he or she becomes aware of a higher purpose, hears an undeniable calling, and is ready to take the next step. Risking life and limb simply becomes part of the job, as they attempt to tell a story in all its truth. For some, this means reporting from a battlefield as an embedded journalist. For others it means standing on the beach with nothing but a camera and microphone as a category five hurricane barrels down on them. For this correspondent, the revelation came when I stared down the most menacing foe I have ever encountered: the Kentucky Fried Chicken Double Down sandwich. Something told me I had to write about it. But first, I had to–against my better judgment–eat it.

The Double Down is packaged in the same Colonel Sanders-adorned,  innocent-looking box into which KFC might put, say, their moderately healthy grilled chicken sandwich with extra tomato, hold the mayo, please. But the box is meant to draw you in and deceive you, for when you open it, you are greeted by the villain in disguise, the Double Down himself.

The sandwich consists of two fried chicken breast fillets, bacon, American cheese, and a tangy sauce whose purpose, I would venture to say, is to distract you from the fact that you are holding a breadless chicken sandwich in your hands.

As any seasoned journalist would do, I first stared at the sandwich for a while. Then I took pictures of it. Then I asked it a warm up question. Then I asked it a trick question. After eliciting no response from the sandwich, I determined that it was at least somewhat safe to consume. And the adventure began.

There’s something oddly unnerving about holding fried chicken fillets in your hands. And there shouldn’t be. Fried chicken is often considered finger food. But that’s when there are bones to eat around and little morsels of unknown goodness to uncover, or when the chicken is in the form of fingers or nuggets. When you’re holding two slabs of meat glued together with cheese, bacon, and sauce, an internal warning bell of etiquette violation starts ringing immediately. The experience is permeated by the constant thought, “Did I lose the bun?” Surely this is not what Taco Bell meant by “Think outside the bun,” even though I did purchase this sandwich-like thing from a KFC/Taco Bell.

The bottom line for the Double Down is that the novelty wears off after ten seconds. You have grease all over your hands and all you really want is a bun. Or a fork. Or a trash can.