There’s a new sushi place in town, and I’ve been on a bit of a kick of having sushi for lunch. In the hot and humid weather especially, I get a hankering for it and will eat sushi a couple of times a week. Of course, if you’re not careful, you can wind up like Jeremy Piven and get mercury poisoning from eating too much sushi, but that dude was eating raw fish morning, noon, and night.
I am guilty of not straying too far from mainstream fish for my nigiri sushi — tuna, salmon, shrimp — although I do seriously love eel (unagi). But when I was at the new place a couple of weeks ago, the owner came over and chatted me up and convinced me to order the special of the day, a variation of “dragon roll”, which the chef had made jumbo-sized and included Alaskan king crab inside the roll. They were calling it “dinosaur roll”, but it looks like there’s no particular standard version of that. Anyway, the presentation, with the roll arranged to look like a sea monster on the plate, was utterly gorgeous; each piece had a different color of the tiny flying fish roe on top, with a bit of octopus suckers for the eyes. The combination of the teriyaki eel and the crab (which was mixed with mayo) made for a very rich dish, which is not what I expect from sushi generally, but was yummy as well as filling. My only disappointment was that I hadn’t brought a camera with me to take a picture of it to share with you.
Now, the dinosaur roll was flavorful enough on its own that I didn’t need to use any soy or wasabi to season it, and I saved the pickled ginger for the end to cleanse my palate, but when you eat ordinary nigiri sushi, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. This webpage has a full-page illustration of the dos-and-don’ts. My personal pet peeve is people who put the wasabi IN the soy sauce and muddle it all together. Sushi, like other items in Japanese cuisine, is all about individual components and how they interact, not mushing them all together like squishing peas into mashed potatoes.
I hope you’ll be informed by this illustration and inspired to go try some raw fish and hot wine at your earliest oppourtnity.
Unagi! That’s a favorite of mine, too. And I never would have thought to mix my wasabi into the soy sauce. Gah!
I see people do it all the time. If you did it in an upscale Japanese restaurant, it would be a huge faux pas, like putting ketchup on filet.
Weird. I learned to eat (and love) sushi with (from?) a friend who had just returned from 2 years in Japan, and I SWEAR he taught me to mix the wasabi right into the soy. Now I am ashamed. And I’ll bet he’s been laughing to himself for YEARS about how he led me astray. Love the Dos and Don’ts … I confess that I knew to eat the whole piece, but not to eat it fish-side-down. Fascinating.
Who knows…maybe nobody in Japan was willing to tell him how uncouth he was. You know, “stupid gaijin doesn’t even know how to eat sushi” and all.
Even though I love the zenful art of making sushi, I need me a personal sushi guide because I just don’t know how to order it or eat it properly to reach the level of sushi nirvana that you aficionados attain. Anybody willing to mentor me?
So, I looked into the wasabi-and-soy mixture issue and found this site:
http://tictacturtle.blogspot.com/2005/06/how-to-eat-sushi.html
The author of the book “How To Eat Sushi” says that the practice has become common in Japan, but isn’t strictly traditional and is considered a bit gauche, like putting ketchup on filet mignon. There’s also a distinction between sushi and sashimi in this regard — it’s less of a “don’t” with sashimi, since there’s no rice involved, but definitely to be avoided with nigiri sushi and maki