The reference to mercury was by someone else and I think was more of a joke. But on the subject of sushi not necessarily being raw fish, eh, I’d say yes and no.
Styles of sushi preparation vary widely, but in my experience the stuff you mention is more like supermarket sushi and is unlikely to be found in a first-rate sushi bar. In my experience you won’t find “sushi rolls” of any kind there. One might encounter sea urchin and the like served in a seaweed wrap (nori) but that isn’t a “sushi roll”, nor is temaki sushi (Japanese hand roll – a single warm cone-shaped roll of seaweed with rice and fillings). And in all my years of going to such places I have mercifully never encountered salmon sushi there, either, which is otherwise very common.
The nigiri sushi served at top-rate sushi bars is almost exclusively fish, usually but not always raw. Eel might be broiled, tuna sometimes smoked or seared with a blowtorch. I suppose one might conceivably be served tamagoyaki, nigiri-style sushi made with a slice of Japanese omelet instead of fish, but the chefs at sushi bars generally aim for more interesting creations.
Sashimi is a different story, although again styles vary. But it’s definitely not “sushi without the rice”. Some of the multi-course tastings I’ve had billed as sashimi were in fact an exquisite series of different dishes with a wide variety of ingredients, and if sushi was to follow there might not be much fish in the sashimi courses.
A thousand blessings upon your garden then. My MiL’s garden is suffering this year due to an excessively wet and cold late May. But I’m still hoping we’ll get a partial harvest of tomatoes out of it. Fresh produce grown with care is a thing of beauty - well, often not literally, as they may look far less beautiful than commercial fruits grown to look good and hold up well, but flavor wise, hell yes.
I get that, I’m familiar with the descriptions if not the actual food (only grocery store sushi here for the likes of me). It annoys me that after sushi, being a ‘thing’ for so many years, and a popular ‘thing’, I still hear tiresome baby-ish ‘ewww, ewww, sushi = raw fish, ick ick ick’. That’s from the burgerfries and chicken tender eaters, who feel moved to bleat their opinions of something they never tried or really know about, if it’s not in their wheelhouse.
I’ve encountered that in coastal areas, too, where there’s always been excellent fish and seafood but the people there like it cooked and never raw. I’ll still try to convince them otherwise, but not as much as I used to.
I’m not going to waste time arguing with the burger-and-fries crowd – or the burnt steak with ketchup crowd. Sushi avoidance is their loss, not mine. Sushi and sashimi are not only among the most alluring foods in the world in terms of the depth and variety of flavours, they’re also the most beautiful in terms of physical presentation. The latter of course reflects the Japanese values we in the west have come to recognize.
My favourite sushi bar moved into renovated premises a few years ago and built the physical bar (and nearby tables) out of Japanese Hinoki cypress simply for its sheer beauty. This, like my other favourite Japanese restaurant, has an omakase menu – which means “chef’s choice” in Japanese, but it really should mean “heaven”. It’s basically a tasting menu, and means you get many, many courses of sushi or both sashimi and sushi that are placed in front of you on the bar as they are prepared. It’s a heavenly experience I have all too rarely, because it ain’t cheap.
One of them has a premium omakase option that the owner-chef will only serve to customers that he knows; the idea is the he can tailor it to their known tastes and doesn’t waste his time and their money on some boor who doesn’t even know what good food is. If the burger-and-fries and burnt-steak-and-ketchup crowd feel that “raw fish is icky”, that’s fine with me!
ETA: This sushi discussion had me browsing the current menus of my two favourite sushi restaurants. I must walk back my earlier comment that first-rate sushi bars/restaurants don’t have maki (sushi rolls). They do. I’ve just never seen them, I guess because we always order omakase.
Same. I’m not sure if input from somebody who literally has eaten the same breakfast (milk, cheese slices, rye bread slice, fruit) at least an average of four times a week for at least the past fifteen years would be really useful in this thread.
I’m having a harder time coming up with foods that I can get tired of. Probably the only thing that keeps me from dying of nutritional deficiencies from insufficiently varied diet is the fact that not requiring novelty doesn’t stop me from being tempted by novelty.
There are some of us who are fairly adventurous eaters that still think sushi and sashimi are only fit for cat food, and only if you don’t like the cat.
I’d starve before I’d eat any of it. And I’ve had grasshoppers at a Mariners game.
Well, as I said, I’m not going to argue with the sushi-haters, but I do want to point out the rather stark dichotomy between claiming that you’re an “adventurous eater” but that you reject out of hand what is regarded around the world as one of the finest cuisines available on the planet.
I think the most reasonable way to objectively explain this is that you’ve simply never been to a first-rate sushi restaurant and have never – unfortunately for you – tasted really good sushi, so you’re left with these silly preconceived notions.
A random gallery of some sushi and sashimi from one of our local sushi bars (it’s not all fish); the menu changes daily but a typical omakase would include the equivalent of all of these and much more, each presented at the bar or brought to your table as a separate course. And yes, at this particular restaurant, each course does come on its own unique plate, usually china, but sometimes wooden – in keeping with the Japanese belief that aesthetics enhances the food (which is true):
I’ve had people who are adventurous eaters who didn’t like sushi, but mostly because they didn’t like fish at all, which is fine. My wife, before she gave up meat was one of them, and fully acknowledged that the buttery smooth tuna had a wonderful texture, and never wanted it again.
I would suggest trying a vegetarian or vegan sushi option, but that’s up to personal taste. I make some very nice homemade roasted red bell pepper nigiri.
There is that. I will not eat fresh water fish at all, nor will I eat urchin or the like. But I freaking love BBQ shark or barracuda, any and every salt water shellfish, mollusk, or crustacean, and most other white-fleshed oceanic fish. I also have an irrational hatred of anything and everything Japanese when it come to food. Don’t ask me to justify it, it just is.
So I’m the guy who goes to the local burger place when the faculty heads out for sushi. I’ve learned to live with the disappointment.
I have an irrational dislike (not hatred) of Tom Hanks and take plenty of flak for it. It may well be a single, common ingredient you dislike, but if you do, I don’t see the point for you to have to search through them all to find a way to make the cuisine ‘acceptable’ to you.
It’s like people who try to shame vegetarians into eating meat because they’re “losing opportunities”.
Life is far to short to eat food you dislike, especially if you’ve given it a couple of tries.
I thought I was explicitly clear earlier that food tastes are subjective and cannot be dictated. You’re totally misunderstanding my point.
Sushi is possibly a special case where a formerly niche food style that began as a Japanese street food gradually became elevated to one of the finest cuisines in the world, and therefore evolved into a wide variety of imitations, many of them very poor. I’m not “dictatating” anything. I’m just saying that someone who proclaims a hatred of “raw fish” has likely never experienced uni at Sushi Nakazawa in Manhattan, or tuna otoro at Shoushin in Toronto. And it’s their loss, not mine.
Then why did you gratuitously label silenus’s statements about his own subjective food tastes concerning sushi/sashimi as “silly preconceived notions”?
I agree that it’s futile and often rude try to dictate other people’s food tastes, or to attempt to “objectively explain” the hypothesized causes of them. Especially when the “explanation” involves stereotypical food snobbery along the lines of "well, you must just never have had really good [whatever the food in question is]".
Mind you, I’m a diehard fan of sushi and sashimi myself, in every form from supermarket rolls to high-end dishes at renowned Japanese restaurants. But I don’t think you’re helping your pro-sushi case by trying to argue that sushi hatred stems from never having been exposed to sufficiently stellar sushi.
The “finest cuisines in the world” are generally characterized by, among other things, their ability to survive and thrive at different levels of authenticity and elegance, from the five-star haute-cuisine restaurant to the supermarket deli case. If a particular cuisine can’t be enjoyed except in its most exquisite professionally sophisticated form, that’s kind of undercutting its claim to be one of the world’s great cuisines.
Some cuisines simply don’t appeal to some people, and that doesn’t mean they’re wrong in describing themselves as “fairly adventurous eaters” in general. There just happens to be one particular realm of food adventure that they don’t enjoy, which is perfectly fine and does not warrant any food-snob disdain.
Do not feel defensive on sushi’s behalf because silenus considers it “only fit for cat food”; that just means more sushi for those of us who do like it.
That’s from the burgerfries and chicken tender eaters, who feel moved to bleat their opinions of something they never tried or really know about, if it’s not in their wheelhouse.