I have no idea how does unagi roe taste. If it is anything like karasumi, I am all for it. If not, I will bow in deference to Smidgen. Us shimobe will never be able to appreciate the fine delicacies that the nekokinds favor.

I am not a software, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. Allow me to modify the sentence a little to make the intended meaning more apparent. "At a nice dinner, [since] when [did] sushi come before sashimi?" Now, taking this passage into Queen's English is beyond my abilities. I am afraid I am unable to work "ye ol' bloody codger" into the resulting translation.

Personally, I wouldn't go the omakase route and leave it in Smidgen's furry and six-fingered hands. This is a neko that will eat his crunchies and then lick his privates (or viceversa) so I am not too certain about his having any taste buds, and if he does, I really don't want to know what makes them happy.

Since you've been kind enough to take it this far, and putting the question back into its original context (Which I've recently been assured is vital)
"Since when did sushi come before sashimi at a nice meal?"

What does that question mean?
What relation does this question have to the former part? "Just from the stand point of going to a place and spend $100-$500"
What has the order when sushi is served in a 'nice meal' got to do with whether one considers it a 'filler'? (This last point is so mystifying to me that I really can't understand the question or why it is being asked.)
In other words
I don't understand the question.

Let's put it another way (one that befits what this thread has descended to)

The question is still not clear to see.
Can you tell me, msb0b?

I believe the question is based on the premise that the courses of a meal are served in descending order of importance/quality. The chef offers his best dishes at the beginning, so that the diners have the room to partake. If the chef saved the best for last, there is a chance that the diners would be full and would not be able to try the food. The ancient Romans had a solution to this dilemma. They practiced "making room" should such occasions arise, but many of them became bulimic as the result. I guess the practice did not catch on in the East.

Now, I am usually satisfied with food served on single plate or bowl, whether it be ramen, tonkatsu, unagi oyako don, curry rice, etc. This multi-course dinner deal sounds awfully complicated to me.

We already had a post offering this exact interpretation:
Are you being sarcastic also?

It's so preposterous it didn't occur to me that this could really be what SJUAMMF meant by his question.

It would be very unkind of me to believe he did mean just that, and I will defer this assumption until it's confirmed.

That's "new man kind" (新人類).:)

Shinjinrui? Too old and too white to be classified as such. Besides, that's like an 80s term, nobody uses it anymore.

If you say so, this is anonymous setting.

Not taking sides here, but I just wanted to clarify whether you meant one comes before the other in a sense of "rank" for example err... Fillet Mignon steak is considered a higher form of food than err... pie.
or time based, as in starters before main etc.

(Good pies are better than bad steaks I know, but I am talking purely by category.)

If there were an order to food, I can only place the generalities. I like to collect those nice course menus. If I look through them, soba, kamameshi and sushi would appear at the the end. Specifically for beef, let's say if an ishiyaki shows up, it is normally past the mid point of the course.

In the internet, nobody knows you are a dog.

That didn't quite answer the question,

I appreciate the subjective choices of what might come first, and largely in a place where you have lots of small meals appear, I too would probably have the ishiyaki somewhere in the middle. (an izakaya set up was what I had in mind)

This does lead to a point - that there isn't clearly defined course structure in Japanese cuisine although some things are more suitable at certain points of the meal. For example, one might have a temaki with ume at the end of a meal at sushi place to clear your palette. It is also common to finish an evening of drinking and eating at a izakaya with a bowl of ochazuke (which by the way, isn't a posh dish at all).

The other point which I would just like to mention to clarify is that there is vast difference in quality of the food between a place that specialises in one kind of food to a place that serves a mixture of foods in one sitting.

So if you want to spend proper money on sushi you go to a sushi place, it will easily come up to 20,000yen or more. If you want good soba, go to a place that just does soba. Never ever have ramen at a place that does anything other than ramen. So categorically speaking, any of the above, will be superior to its counterpart in a mixed meal in a ryokan. (soba from a good soba restaurant is better than a small soba "side" dish in a multi course menu)
Of course, some ryokans have fantastic food and take advantage of seasonal ingredients.

In terms of ranking them (posh/formal/greater status)
sashimi/sushi somehwhere in the top end. Sukiyaki is probably somewhere just below,
lower middle would be peasant food with a long history like soba, kamameshi would be around here as well.
Much to my annoyance, I must admit ramen is down there with ochazuke and oyako don probably hovers above these two.

This post does not answer the post modern question of "what about kaiten sushi at 200 yen per plate" and the "sushi as canape" phenomenon - that's another thread altogether and will probably involve disparate themes like Japan and the West, losing the war and the rise of Casio calculators in the 70's!

SJUAMMF - that question in post 13:
"Why is it that you could well understand things you need translation but not understand my simple question to Pickles"

It's quite clear to me why I can't understand your 'simple' question.

How can I when you obviously don't understand it either?

I'm through playing Roberta Irrelevant.

:)

Give it up.... We have a classic case of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and when painted into a corner instead of just throwing in the towel and picking up some basic, useful, knowledge such as

decides do try to squirm his way out of it with some low-rent semantics. jib caught that drift early on...