I have a date on Sunday, and thanks to this thread, I will now be picking a sushi restaurant!
I’m so glad I had friends who dared me to try it so many years ago…I love it and wish I could eat it every day.
Possibly useful trivia: Avocado as a sushi ingredient was the innovation of a Japanese immigrant in California. He was unable to get toro, which is the fatty belly of a large tuna, with any degree of reliability, as the shipping networks hadn’t yet evolved. He discovered, after some experimentation with local ingredients, that avocado has a similar mouthfeel in terms of fattiness and oil, even though it has a very different bite, so he started using it as a substitute.
So for what it’s worth, avocado is entirely acceptable as a sushi ingredient for its conceptual role in the overall experience, if you see what I mean.
Mosier, your threadshitting has been reported.
I’ve actually been trying to tone down the sushi hate lately. You’re right that I can sense sushi threads and can’t resist posting in them, though. It’s my pet hate. I just don’t get it.
The fish that’s worth “a few cents” that I mentioned wasn’t a reference to how cheap fish is, but how little of it is typically present in sushi. You’re lucky if there’s an ounce of it in a single serving.
Anyway, if you guys really think I’m threadshitting I’ll leave. I was just trying to poke fun at you. Sorry if it came across any differently.
Why? I mean, why don’t you get it? Sushi is, from Wiki:
*In Japanese cuisine, sushi is vinegared rice, usually topped with other ingredients, including fish, various meats, and vegetables. Outside of Japan, sushi is sometimes misunderstood to mean the raw fish itself, or even any fresh raw-seafood dishes.[1] In Japan, sliced raw fish alone is called sashimi and is distinct from sushi, as sashimi is the raw fish component, not the rice component. *
I mean, basically, it’s just a neat and interesting way of packaging things that a lot of us eat anyway. It does not have to be raw fish, and I don’t eat it with raw fish. It’s convenient to eat, and quite tasty.
I’m not asking you to like it. I’m saying that even though there’s lots of foods out there I don’t like, I get why other people like them, and I don’t go into threads just to badmouth them.
Yes, I do think you are threadshitting. If you had come in here and said, “I have hated all of the types of sushi I have tried, can you recommend me something else?” I’d be OK. If you had said “Sushi is raw fish, YUCK!” at least I could have corrected you. But honestly, it’s like hating sauteed vegetables. Which ones? Prepared in what style? With what seasonings?
The place that I go to, at least three or four times a week, is called SushiLand (in Redmond, WA). It’s owned by a white guy, and staffed primarily by Hispanics.
It’s also really good sushi for an amazingly low price- I tend to spend under twelve bucks for lunch.
I ran into Bill Gates there, once.
Go for it.
I don’t hate it, it’s just not terribly interesting for the price. In the spirit of fighting ignorance, what should I try at a restaurant that doesn’t cost a tentacle and a fin, er, arm and a leg?
You answered your own question there, but didn’t realize it. Sushi is neat and interesting packaging of usually very small amounts of cheap stuff that people would probably eat anyway. I actually don’t care very much about sushi, but I’m amazed that it has become such a cultural phenomenon. People get into sushi with the same intensity as football fans or political activists. I think it’s funny.
So anyway, I’m sorry I hijacked everyone’s fun. I didn’t mean to derail the thread, just post a little snark. I’ve learned my lesson (nobody thinks it’s funny but me) and i won’t post in sushi threads anymore.
pencils in a dinner at Minado into her NYC schedule
Maybe if I don’t eat breakfast or lunch that day, I might be able to manage to try all 250 kinds!
Sushi-grade yellowfin tuna retails at around $15-$20/lb around here. So there’s a buck per ounce.
Anyhow, it took me about four or five times to “get” sushi. One of my girlfriends used to love it, so I would tag along with her and then stop at Burger King afterwards to fill myself up. It just wasn’t enough food for me. I had nothing against sushi (and it was all nigiri I was eating), it just didn’t connect with me.
Then one day a rich Japanese business man I was teaching took me and his business partner out to lunch. He ordered a ginormous spread of otoro–something like 30 or 40 pieces for the three of us. Oh, my God, did I discover how much I just love raw fatty tuna. After that experience, I began appreciating sushi more and more, and now I love it all, from the otoro to the uni. And I love the way it leaves you feeling light on your feet and energetic, instead of bogged down from a big meat & potatoes meal.
And the purity of the flavors is what keeps me coming back. I’m still pretty mainstream (except for maybe the uni) in that my favorite fishes are the various grades of tuna and salmon, but those fatty fishes tastes so good on their own, that it would be sinful, for me, to dress them up with anything else. They are delicate, subtle flavors, so much so that I don’t even use wasabi (and only the merest dip of soy, fish side down) because it ruins the balance of flavors for me.
Maybe some do, but my approach is “Ooh! Yummy food!” I like it when I find a kind of food that, for whatever reason, really appeals to me. I like sushi. I also like hot dogs, salads that I make myself with all the ingredients I want, and diced chicken cooked with rice and cream of chicken gravy.
I think it’s Queens? So speaks the Upstater, who is vaguely aware that yes, there are five boroughs of NYC and knows not much else. I think they might have one in Manhattan, too.
Mosier, it’s cool that you don’t like it. Really. Personally, a big part of it is I like the packaging. I like crab legs and lobster for partly the same reason. Yes, the taste is good, but I like the work to get to it, too. I love sitting down with a plate of crab legs and cracking them open patiently. I love eating sushi, it’s an interesting intermingling of flavors.
Plus as pulykamell says, it’s a much lighter meal than other meals. It’s nice for variety.
Now I’m going to have to have sushi for lunch, it’s been a long time.
But then, I am not a picky eater and will try most anything, and like a lot of variety.
And upon preview, Captain Carrot said it. I’m not religious about it, but it sure is tasty. I like gelato, that’s a really expensive type of ice cream for just a little serving, yet no one criticizes me on my love of gelato!
You should stop trying to discuss what you don’t know anything about. It’s embarrassing.
I’m actually a bit meh about the fish (although when REALLY fresh, it can be delicious), but my favourite part of sushi is actually the rice. All of you who wonder who on earth orders the cucumber maki… 
For starters, high-quality sushi-grade fish is not cheap. Second, maybe my diet is just piss poor, but I wouldn’t eat much mackerel, yellowtail, squid, etc etc if I didn’t have sushi once in a while. Also, it’s not as simple as slapping fish on rice. Preparing the rice is much more difficult than you’d expect. There’s sauce that goes on it, and it needs just the right amount of water and things or else it doesn’t come out good. Other than that, there’s how much wasabi to use (in America it comes separate but in Japan it goes on the nigiri itself typically).
Then there’s the artistic side of it as well. I hate to be ‘that guy,’ but I’ve worked as a sushi chef (albeit an assistant), for a while in the past and I’ve been to Japan a few times (not that American sushi is bad. It can be just as good, although that’s rare IME). Anyway, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’m not angry at you nor care about threadshitting one way or the other, just correcting what I think is a mistake. If you don’t like sushi then fine, but don’t be ignorant about it.
If you couldn’t tell, I also love sushi. Love love love love sushi. The rice, the seaweed, the fresh fish, the wasabi, I love pretty much everything about it.
I like rolls too but usually prefer to have nigirizushi or sashimi. My favorite commonly found fish is yellowtail. I love the mixture of sweet and buttery flavors. My favorite fish period is a toss-up between isaki, or striped pigfish (no wonder it’s not popular in America), or kochi, a type of flathead fish. They’re similar to yellowtail in flavor, but sweeter and … different. I can’t describe it very well unfortunately. Both of the latter fish are most commonly found around Australia so I doubt they’ll ever be found in the US. A shame 
And how could I leave out toro? Heavenly stuff that is.
I agree with the poster who cursed you all for giving him/her a craving. I just moved from Boston where I ate sushi at LEAST once a week and typically 2 or 3 times. Now I’m in Iowa and aside from the “problems” of living in a small town in a landlocked state, I simply don’t know where to go to get good sushi in my new environment.
I’ve heard people say you could get good stuff around here though. I’ll be finding it shortly!
I also like the cucumber maki, but really love inari for the combination of the rice and the sweet tofu. Yum!
My biggest fear about the possibility of moving outside of Florida is that I’ll likely be pretty far away from the ocean. Where I live is the furthest from the ocean that I’ve ever lived, and I have to wonder what having to eat fish that’s not super fresh (and refrozen several times) tastes like. :eek: If I ever end up in a landlocked state, I’ll probably only end up eating sushi of any sort at the really high-end restaurants, as I’d be afraid of food poisoning at other ones.
I will bet very good money that the majority of fish found in sushi restaurants in coastal US cities was not caught within a thousand miles of the area, if even that close. I’ll also add the bet that most inland US cities get their sushi-grade fish from the same places and with very little shipping time added on to get it there.
I hear this a lot when I’m visiting the East or West Coast, but unless the person is talking about lobsters in Maine, dungeness crab in San Francisco, etc., most of the seafood on the coasts really isn’t that local and may be caught off a different continent entirely.
QFT. Fun fact - nori isn’t actually seaweed, it’s algae that’s pressed into sheets. I’ll eat nori by itself and I’ve had two cats who liked it.
I keep meaning to learn how to make the rice properly. But then I’m the kind of person who can easily live on just rice bowls. Mmm… short grain rice, with leftover fish or meat (anything’s good, but mahi mahi is especially yummy), sesame seeds, and strips of nori. Heaven.
I live in Seattle, and visit Boston regularly, and what you guys call “sushi” is barely worthy of the name. 
Y’all make great chowder, but you want good sushi, come out here to Seattle, or better yet Vancouver.
Also, re the “local” ingredient question, I recommended this book in another thread a few days ago, but here it is again: The Sushi Economy. Thoroughly researched, and beautifully written, it’s all about how sushi took off in the U.S., and the import/export networks and technologies that were created to make it possible. Yeah, a lot of what you see under the glass at your sushi counter was two thousand miles away forty-eight hours ago. How it got from there to you is what the book is about. Absolutely fascinating; highly recommended.