If you prefer a little more soy flavor, then your method is the best: flip it over, briefly dip the neta, and then pop it into your mouth. My wife, who did not grow up eating sushi, still dips the rice, and when we’re done, her okosara (the tiny shoyu plate/bowl) has a lot of rice in it. She should know better, but I love her still. She knows enough, however, to eat sushi with her fingers even though her chopstick skills are excellent.
If any sushi chef ever took issue with me doing this, then I might care. But they haven’t, so I don’t. It’s good to know these things, and if following the rules enhances your enjoyment, then by all means do it by the book. It’s your dinner.
But in my opinion, getting bogged down in technical detail misses the point of the omakase, which is sharing a meal with the chef who’s making your food. It’s dinner, not the LSAT.
I bought a pair of incredibly cute little plates for this purpose in Japan! They have an image of a cat embedded in the surface, at two depths. And when you add a little soy sauce, it becomes two-toned. I’ve really been enjoying them.
But it’s not technical detail for the sake of some pointless protocol. It’s all about maximizing your enjoyment. Edomae style sushi dates back to 1820s Japan, and the Japanese have since greatly refined it and know how to do it right. Pay attention to them. It’s for your own benefit.
They may not have said anything, but they notice. Deconstructing the nigiri isn’t that big a deal, but it’s a little like taking your new Ferrari down to the local body and paint shop and having flames put on it.
This is correct. Everyone should at least try sushi as the chef recommends. If it doesn’t work for you, dip it in ketchup or whatever suits you. It’s your meal.
A mentor of mine in graduate school was a 4th generation sushi chef before he disgraced his family by becoming a metallurgist and making a bundle of money for the Japanese steel industry. He taught me to pick nigiri up with my fingers and invert it to dip the fish in the soy.
I don’t really like to get food on my fingers. I prefer to use utensils. I often eat my pizza with a fork and knife. I usually eat fried chicken with a fork and knife. I’d rather eat sushi with chopsticks.
I guess i eat corn on the cob with my fingers. And lobster. Although i usually take out the tail and claw meat and eat that with a fork after I’ve eaten the hard parts (the little legs, the delicate meat in the torso, at the base of each leg) with my fingers. And i wash my hands between those two steps, or at least clean them off with the wetnaps provided.
Thank you both for the lecture in propriety; I’ll make sure to try harder to impress the chef next time I’m dining.
My experience is more centered on small Japanese seaside towns where the chef’s point of pride is getting the first haul in scallop season, or serving uni that was in the sea 15 minutes ago, or serving things like kegani that are only found locally. It’s a little different from stuffy Tokyo places where they lean heavily on ceremony to justify their extortionary alcohol margins, it’s all about the connection between people, the food, the sea, and the seasons. That’s the only cultural universal you really need to know.
It’s not about “impressing the chef”. It’s about appreciating the craft that the chef has worked long and hard to acquire the skills to create. Part of the beauty of a top-notch sushi bar is the close relationship between the chef and his customers. Which is why, as I mentioned earlier, that the superb chef at my favourite sushi bar has an upscale omakase that he only serves to known, preferred customers, because otherwise his efforts would be wasted.
I don’t pretend to understand Japanese culture, but I think this is part of the sushi experience. An American sushi bar can import fish from Tokyo Bay, but there’s nothing they can do about the stereotypical North American boor.
While living in Japan I noticed there was a pattern of fellow expats who would claim to have identified the one true way of engaging with Japanese culture, and it often turned out they were overgeneralizing from their own experience in their own place of living. It’s not a monolith, there’s no one way to do it, and if there were, certainly a North American sushi joint isn’t the place for that kind of gatekeeping. Sushi started out as a farmer’s meal and became fast-food of the Edo era. At heart it’s a farmer’s and fisherman’s food. A lot of artistry has sprung up around it and that’s great, but it’s not the universal definining element of the cuisine.
Enjoy what you enjoy, but it’s amusing to see people designate themselves the gatekeepers of a culture that isn’t theirs, from a country they’ve never lived in.
Thanks everyone for all the great info/opinion here. Here’s what I now plan: I do want “chef’s choice” which I might not call “omakase” only because I don’t want to appear to be more experienced than I am. I think table seating will be more appropriate because my friend won’t be eating sushi and might be eating tempura or something else fried that could annoy the dedicated sushi-eaters. If they bring the entire portion of sushi for me to the table all at once, then the experience will be less customized to my taste than eating piece-by-piece at the bar, but so be it. I think I’ll be able to eat and enjoy most anything.
One of the restaurant possibilites has a 5-piece chef’s choice nigiri for $25, so maybe I’ll have that, then have another after that with a different mix, indicating for the second order what I liked and what I didn’t like so much.
I’ll probably avoid soy and wasabi altogether, trusting that the nigiri alone are properly flavored.
A note about not drinking alcohol – I brought that up, thinking about sitting at a bar, only because I know this lowers the bill a lot and tipping needs to be correspondingly higher.
That really depends on the place.
High-end sushi restaurants with experienced chefs then sure…they serve you what is meant to be a perfect bite of nigiri with the soy and/or wasabi already included.
Cheaper places…maybe and maybe not.
Up to you to decide when you eat a piece. Whatever suits your taste.
As for alcohol there is no requirement you have to drink. Get tea instead. Although a glass of warm sake with your sushi is pretty great. YMMV
My mileage varies I’ve never had sake i enjoyed. You don’t have to drink. Especially if you aren’t at the bar.
I totally get that. I hated it the first time I tried it (my roommate/friend who speaks Japanese and travels there a lot handed me a bottle with a label all in Japanese telling me it was a beer…I took a swig expecting beer and it was actually sake…that was unpleasant but he had a good laugh). Definitely an acquired taste and not one anyone needs to work on.
It does pair well with sushi though if you are having a drink with dinner. Beer works pretty well too (mostly).
Ecch.
If they bring you a blob of wasabi separately I would be disappointed, as a decent sushi chef should embed it within the nigiri. But if they do, then use it. Apply it after the soy sauce. You definitely should use soy sauce on any sushi that doesn’t already come with its own unique sauce, which most won’t. Unless the chef has already brushed the sushi with soy, which typically only happens at the sushi bar on request if it happens at all, it’s something you need to do yourself. If you don’t, the sushi will be too bland.
You’re taking a different approach to this than I would, but then, I have strong feelings about the subject. If it were me, I’d try to convince my friend to try sushi, and both of us would be at the sushi bar enjoying full-scale omakase!
Specifically, it started out as fast food widely sold in food stands in Tokyo. But when my favourite sushi bar – the one where dinner for two is going to run into four figures – proudly describes their Edomae style sushi, they’re not telling you they serve street food. It’s a nod to its original heritage that has since become considerably refined and should be appreciated as such.
Many great foods have humble origins. Indeed one could say that in some sense all foods had humble origins. That doesn’t mean one should bring a jar of seafood sauce and a bottle of ketchup to an upscale sushi bar and tell the chef to mind his own business.
There’s always a degree of personal preference, of course, but not understanding how to best appreciate sushi is the equivalent of asking for a rib eye steak to be well-done to the point of grayness and the texture of shoe leather, and then compensating for the dryness by pouring ketchup over it. If that’s how you (the generic “you”) think you like steak, you really should be eating something else. I would recommend a Big Mac.
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Free tip, take it or leave it, but if you’re dining with an actual Japanese chef, feel free to say omakase if you like. You will not be confused for an expert because your pronunciation will be obviously non-expert. And that’s fine. A lot of Japanese people are self-conscious about their English, so they tend to appreciate even bad attempts at Japanese.
The key is to let them guide you, that’s what the whole experience is about. Talk, show curiosity, show exaggerated enthusiasm and appreciation. This will beat sophistication 10 times out of 10.
The poster in @eonwe’s link seems pretty intuitive to me. I eat sushi all the time and never felt a need to deconstruct my sushi.
Not sure about the 30 second rule. Like the whole plate in 30 seconds? I assume they are serving one piece at a time.
I’ve been told you are supposed to eat rolls with your hands but the nigiri you can eat with chopsticks.
Other than that I wouldn’t overthink it. No one is going to scream at you or chase you with a meat cleaver or katana or anything. Most times I’ve sat at the sushi bar the chef seemed happy to make suggestions vs staring at you all stone-faced and judgingly.
I see you’ve dined with my wife’s aunt.