Sushi snobs
07/25/2005 @ 6:00 am
A Tokyo-based humorist, in an online commentary titled “So You Want to Be a Sushi Snob?”, offers this advice on eating sushi outside Japan:
The second thing to remember about dealing with sushi snobs in the United States is that there are no good sushi restaurants in the entire country. Nope. None. Zip. Nada. They don’t exist. So being a sushi snob in the USA is kind of like being a cowboy in Tokyo: A tad bit ridiculous, wouldn’t you agree? A halfway decent sushi restaurant [anywhere in] Japan blows away the best you got in New York or Los Angeles. Okay, well, I do know of one good sushi restaurant in L.A. But you’d have to be out of your mind to pay US$250 for some sushi that you can get anywhere in Japan for US$15. . .”
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
Shes definitely at the top of my hot list.
perfeckt 10:10
I’ve had both the best here (Houston, TX) and half-way decent (I guess?) stuff in Tokyo. I disagree…although I can’t say this guy is actually being serious.
July 25th, 2005 at 6:52 amDamn who’s the real sushi snob here
July 25th, 2005 at 10:50 amIt sure is food for thought.
July 25th, 2005 at 11:31 amCertain fish are better in different places. The salmon (sake) is much more fresh in the pacific northwest (seattle/vancouver) than in Japan, so it tastes better there than in Japan. Other fish are more fresh in Japan, etc.
July 25th, 2005 at 3:13 pmThough, the best sushi I had in my life wasn’t in a restaurant at all. I had it at the home of a fisherman in shikoku.
He’s wrong on a few things…
You can find really good sushi restaurants in New York and LA. I’ve been to the LA one he refers to and you absolutely cannot get something comparable in Japan for $15.
There’s nothing wrong with eating sushi with your hands if your hands are clean.
Fresh grated, real wasabi isn’t that hard to find in the US. You can usually pick up wasabi root from Japan in most Japanese supermarkets in the US.
Also… “where all the ‘in-crowd’ conjugate”
Maybe he’s been in Japan too long.
July 26th, 2005 at 9:26 amAs far as the eating sushi with hands bit. I was told by several different Japanese that as long as you are sitting at the sushi “bar” or counter, then it was totally ok. Also, being an American, I always thought the fish was the most important part of sushi. I was corrected many times by many Japanese. It is the rice.
July 26th, 2005 at 9:52 amThat’s not really correct. Sushi literally means vinegar rice. I imagine that is what they meant. So you can have sushi that is made from eggs or anything else and that’s sushi regardless. Or you can have raw fish but without the vinegar rice it’s not sushi. However, the most important part of good sushi will be good fish, since the rice is very easy to make.
July 27th, 2005 at 5:26 amthe rice is NOT easy to make. it takes some itamae three years to learn how to make sushi rice properly. and those aren’t the slow ones.
July 27th, 2005 at 6:01 amWhy is soy sauce at a sushi shop called something like “purple sauce”? And why do the sake cups have bulls-eye patterns on the bottom? And why does one say OKANJO for the bill at a sushi shop insteade of the normal “the bill please?”
July 27th, 2005 at 12:45 pmWhatever. Every grandmum in Japan can make the rice; it can’t be that bloody hard.
July 27th, 2005 at 1:26 pmHe is a humorist~~… Wasn’t meant to be serious.
August 4th, 2005 at 11:09 pmI have to agree with the orginal comment. Real sushi is only in Japan. What they call sushi in the US or any other place outside of Japan is not sushi. If you don’t call it sushi – call it Fusion Cuisine, then it is not bad. To really know sushi, it takes years of living in Japan.
April 4th, 2006 at 4:59 pm