I’m a sushi lover, but I’m wondering if what I’m eating here in the U.S. isn’t very “authentic”.
Chinese food, for instance, is very Americanized. Not even close to what I ate when I visited Hong Kong, and friends who have been to mainland China say similar things.
So what’s the sushi like in Japan, and what have we stupid yanks done to pervert it over here?
well, i can say that 95% of the wasabi you get in the States is not real wasabi.
That’s right, kids, wasabi is NOT green horseradish. Nor is it horseradish of anykind. Wasabi is a rhizome that is grown almost exclusively in Japan (they’ve just figured out how to grow it in Oregon, as well. Apparently it’s pretty damned difficult to grow.) It’s much milder in taste than horseradish and, IIRC, not related to it, either.
No opinion on the OP, as have never personally tried the stuff. Just wanted to throw in http://www.freshwasabi.com/
Sushi varies within Japan.
I’ve noticed less stuff made with egg or fishcakes here. Not a lot of California roll available in Japan.
The wasabi I eat here in California tasted like the wasabi in Japan. People sometimes refer to it as “green horseradish” to give newcomers to it a frame of reference for it. That way you won’t accidentally eat the whole glob of it at once.
Yeah, the stuff in the US is generally only a vague imitation of the stuff you get in Japan. There are places in the US where you can get authentic sushi, but they are extremely rare. There is a whole culture of fishing in Japan, there’s nothing like it in the US, so the quality of ingredients are so poor, and not very fresh, so that it really is inferior, sometimes I can’t even eat it. On the other hand, while I was in Japan, I recall numerous occasions where I ate sushi that was made from fish that were alive until sushiya-san plucked them from a tank. And in Japan, any sushi-ya that served Gekkikan sake would be laughed out of business. Around here, the local sushi place serves Gekkikan out of a 10 gallon cardboard/plastic carton.
Oh… I should tell you a good joke. What’s the difference between the east and west coasts of the USA and the midwest? On the coasts, carp isn’t a seafood.
Not quite true. Both are in the Cruciferae family which includes horseradish as well as mustard. So they are related, just not in the same genus. The heat comes from mustard oils found in these plants.
Gee, where do you live, chas? Where i live you can get very very fresh fish that’s good quality as well. I guess it helps to live where fishing is one of the major industries .
A little more specifically on the kick that horseradish and wasabi have:
As you could have guessed, I live in the Midwest, where carp is considered seafood. But my town has 3 sushi places, the only sushi places within 250 miles. And all of them suck.
But I still maintain that it’s still hard to get decent sushi in the US. I lived in LA and SF for many years, and I only found ONE sushi-ya that really qualified as authentic. But I might have unreasonably high standards. Ever eaten uni right off the fishing boat, just minutes after it was plucked from the Sea of Japan?
Good god man, no wonder you have such poor quality seafood. One of the best places to get fish where i live is Phil’s Fish house which has a great cioppino and lots of different local varieties of fish. It’s right by the docks where the fishermen unload their catches.
Anyway, what’s funny about uni is, a lot of it is exported from California to Japan to meet their demand.
I think you probably do have unreasonably high standards. I think that at least one of the sushi chefs here was trained in Japan i believe, so i’m pretty sure he makes it a point to get the best ingredients.
Doob – Nice catch! I just looked up in the Sept/Oct 1999 Saveur magazine to figure out what I misremembered. It’s this – wasabi is more closely related to watercress than to horseradish. (Though all three are in the Cruciferae family, as you correctly stated.)
Didn’t that article mention that wasabi grows in or near cold mountain streams as well? If yes, that explains the closeness of the relation to watercress.
I haven’t eaten sushi in Japan, but I have eaten it in Singapore, and it was very close to what I’d had at the better sushi restaurants near San Francisco. The differences I remember were:
A) Much more attention to detail (in presentation, construction of the rolls, etc)
B) I have to come to the conclusion that the Uni was better, because I didn’t have thoughts of spitting it back out, like I have every time I’ve tried it back home. 
C) There were a lot more dishes to choose from. For example, the mystery custard with stuff (hard boiled eggs, mushrooms, etc) buried in it, plus the dish where the deep-fried fish skeleton was part of the meal.
…and there were California rolls.
I was in Japan a while ago for less than a day (long story). While changing planes at Osaka, I picked up a plastic container of sushi similar to what you can get here. The amazing thing was that it was on 400 yen, while the 12 oz. cup of Coke I had with it was 300 yen. Probably far from the top end of the scale, but it was of similar quality to what’s available here, and I’ve definately had better sushi in Boston, where I’d imagine that they could get fresh fish.
The sushi restaurant I visit has Californiaized its sushi & they told us too.
99% of the people I ask, don’t know what ‘sushi’ means.
Well, technically, ‘sushi’ refers not to the fish, but to the vinagered rice it’s served on. Raw fish on its own is sashimi, which roughly translates as ‘sliced meat’.
So it doesn’t have to be fish, or even something uncooked, to qualify. Fry up a cheeseburger and serve it on the right kind of rice and that’s sushi too (I’ve actually seen a couple of shops in Japan serve this as a novelty item). Of course, if you tried to pass it off with a straight face as real sushi, you’d probably give any legit chef a stroke.
–sublight.
Try to remember that anything served with avocado, Mayonnaise or cream cheese is an abortion and not suitable for classification as real sushi. Even a slice of lemon on your ebi or sake is quite destructive to your palate’s ability to appreciate the more subtle nuances of flavor involved.
Many Japanese restaurants here in California have very high quality fish. Someone I know who has lived in Japan for many years said that the Japanese waters are so fished out that we actually have a better selection here on the West coast. You need to establish a solid relationship with the sushi chef in order to assure good quality in your food.
If you wish to get splendid service from a sushi chef that you respect, order some of the real wasabi from the aforementioned freshwasabi.com (as I had a novice friend do) and bring that with you to dinner. Your chef will have tears in his eyes and you will be appreciated forevermore as a quality customer. The flavor is very different and much more subtle.
God, I hope you meant “aberration”.
Not in the least. The oleaginous nature of avocado, Mayonnaise or cream cheese all coat the palate and make it impossible to appreciate the truly delicate nature of this Japanese artform. “California” rolls and the like are total anathema to the correct and desired intentions of the chef. However much anyone is entitled to eat whatever pleases them, the nontraditional ingredients involved so completely defeat the finer nature of the cusine that they are indeed garbage, or worse.
Hmm. I may have an uneducated palate, but I like lemon on my sake. I tried it in many different sushi restaurants (all in California) before I found one that offered thin lemon slices on the sake. I ate the whole thing, rind included, and it was awesome! I really liked sake before, but now it is one of the favorite 3 I always order (sake, unagi, maguro).
And I still don’t think that abortion means what you think it means if you persist in using it that way.
Please refer to this post for my exact feelings on the topic. Others seem to agree with me.
As a chef, I can only encourage you to eat what you enjoy the most. Your favorite three are quite fine selections. I can only hope that you might try the salmon skin hand roll described in my linked post. If you are able to appreciate the subtle flavor of eel, I am sure you will enjoy both the sake temaki and the tataki recipes that I mention.