Sushi do, sushi don’t
Here are 7 “rules” of sushi. See which ones you agree with, or have experienced first-hand, so to speak, and then read the article here.
1. It is correct to eat sushi either with fingers or chopsticks.
2. Place entire portion in your mouth, holding sushi so that fish portion touches your tongue. Never bite in half and put remainder back on plate.
3. Lightly dip fish, not rice, into small amount of soy.
4. Do not dump a large amount of wasabi into your soy, turning it into soup. Wasabi should be placed directly onto sushi if added at all.
Watada: Yes, wasabi can have an overpowering taste and you lose the taste of the fish.
5. Use chopsticks to grab sushi when taking it from a shared plate.
6. Do not rub your chopsticks together to remove splinters. It is rude. A good sushi bar would never offer chopsticks of such low quality.
7. Never flop a big piece of pickled ginger onto sushi before eating it. Eat ginger between pieces of sushi as a palate cleanser.
8. Never hand money to the sushi chef. The chef typically never touches money.
[Four sushi chefs gave their opinions to a newspaper reporter: They were James Hamamori, chef-owner of Wasa in Irvine and Newport Beach, Calif.; Takashi Abe, chef-owner of Abe in Newport Beach and Bluefin in Newport Coast; Lorin Watada, corporate sushi chef for 11 Roy's; and D.K. Kodama, chef-owner of six restaurants in Hawaii, including three Sansei Seafood Restaurants & Sushi Bars.]
(Thanks to Mulboyne for the link)
I think if I need lessons in sushi etiquette I’ll ask here in Japan, not in the U.S.
July 7th, 2006 at 6:44 pmThe Japanese Tradition
From early 90’s comedy group ラーメンズ
July 7th, 2006 at 7:42 pmWow, I been doing it all wrong, I guess. I use my hands in high class joints, because that’s what my Japanese friends told me, and in lowclass kaiten sushi i use chopsticks, and i use lots of wasabi, love the stuff, dip the rice into the soy sauce, not the fish, use lots of red ginger to fill me up, and wash it all down with nigorizake. Oh well, live and learn….. any way you cut it, i guess, it’s still delicious, and fun!
FOOD!
July 7th, 2006 at 8:03 pmEmail from good friends in TOKYO, Satoru and Mitsuko: They wrote:
Those sushi rules are interesting!
>> 1. It is correct to eat sushi either with either your fingers or with
>> chopsticks.
We agree.
>>
>>
>> 2. Place entire portion in your mouth, holding sushi so that fish
>> portion touches your tongue. Never bite in half and put remainder back
>> on plate.
Does “holding sushi so that fish portion touches your tongue” mean that
“holding sushi upside down”? If so, it is not necessarily true, we think.We agree that it is better to eat the entire portion at a time.
>>
>> 3. Lightly dip fish, not rice, into small amount of soy.
We agree.
>>
>>
>> 4. Do not dump a large amount of wasabi into your soy, turning it into
>> soup. Wasabi should be placed directly onto sushi if added at all.
>> Watada: Yes, wasabi can have an overpowering taste and you lose the
>> taste of the fish.
Usually, wasabi is already on top of rice, under fish, when served.
So, you don’t have to add wasabi (either in soy sauce or directly onto
sushi),
unless you really want more wasabi taste.
The amount of wasabi used for each sushi is meticulously designed by the
sushi chef, so usually no additional wasabi is needed.
>> 5. Use chopsticks to grab sushi when taking it from a shared plate.
That’s correct!
>>
>>
>> 6. Do not rub your chopsticks together to remove splinters. It is
>> rude. A good sushi bar would never offer chopsticks of such low
>> quality.
We agree.
>>
>>
>>
>> 7. Never flop a big piece of pickled ginger onto sushi before eating
>> it. Eat ginger between pieces of sushi as a palate cleanser.
We agree.
>>
>>
>> 8. Never hand money to the sushi chef. The chef typically never touches
>> money.
Maybe. But, the chef would wash his hand anyway when he touches money…
We feel like eating sushi now!
July 8th, 2006 at 12:56 pmSatoru and Mitsuko
I’m with Danny up there. I guess I’ve been doing it wrong all of these years! Oh, well — I only ever go to kaiten places and no one really cares what you do in there anyway.
July 8th, 2006 at 8:39 pmHere or in the US, it’s the same: correct on all eight points.
July 9th, 2006 at 12:36 am[...] From: East Valley tribune.com via Japundit. [...]
July 10th, 2006 at 1:26 amOh, jeez, I never realized how many things I’ve been doing wrong…
July 11th, 2006 at 11:58 am[...] Japundit also has posted very good and detailed pieces for starters on Noriko Takiguchi’s How to eat Sushi properly and Sushi do, sushi don’t . As always Wikipedia has detailed infor. of A to Z about Sushi. [...]
November 7th, 2006 at 3:45 pm