Yes, that sounds like sashimi, and not sushi. What’s your point?
There are many types of sushi without fish. It may have cucumber, natto, omelette, pickled radish, etc.
There is no sushi without rice.
Yet, not one of those showed up on Jiro’s menu.
They serve miso soup at sushi bars too and it’s not sushi. Barbecue joints sell coleslaw, but it would silly to call coleslaw barbecue. Many steak restaurants serve lobster, is it steak because it’s served there?
I’ve been to many restaurants and hotels in Japan that serve sashimi but not sushi. Especially common in rural fishing towns/villages.
Tamago is right there on the first page of the link.
That would make sense if rice were cabbages, and fish were wishes. And kobe and lobster sashimi were thinly sliced and served with some shiso leaves in a overlapping medallion-fish scale pattern, topped a light yuzu and shiriashi dressing.
Actually I looked at the video again, and I’m pretty sure that is sushi (i.e. with rice). They didn’t show the part where the chef took some rice and combined it with the shrimp, but if you look carefully when it’s served, it looks like there is rice under the shrimp meat.
Also it’s cooked shrimp, so it wouldn’t be sashimi even without the rice. (Sashimi is raw, or at most very lightly seared. Sushi may have cooked seafood, or may not have any seafood on it.)
So let’s look at what we have so far devilsknew. You say there is nothing on Jiro’s menu that doesn’t have fish, but you are wrong, and then you say that one of the dishes on the menu does not have rice in it but it does. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so clearly incorrect maintain that they are right.
I feel the true spirit of rice and fish, in its true and humble, food of the poor masses, origin will never be expressed through Jiro or any other sushi chef’s art as it is known today. This is my original contention, and I mantain it… How much did Bourdain have to pay for that meal? Ever stop to think of that?
I could scavenge on a beach with some rice rations and vinegar, and catch my dinner fresher, more authentic, and totally free compared to Bourdain’s Folly.
Actually, I used to eat at a place in Chicago that very clearly advertised as a sushi AND sashimi bar. Most of them around here don’t advertise sashimi. You can get it if you ask for it, but they don’t bother to put it on the menu because most of the folks around here just order California rolls anyhow. Food wimps.
Err… most histories of sushi I’ve seen attribute the earliest form of sushi to a means of preserving fish, not eating it fresh, and apparently the rice was discarded once the fish was sufficiently aged. Likewise, the current maki rolls and nigiri are believed to have originated in TOKYO and not on some fisherman’s boat. In fact, it’s even attributed to a specific person in some sources, one Hanaya Yohei, but it’s believed he either fermented or briefly cooked the fish he served as sushi. He certainly wasn’t a fisherman or rural peasent.
I don’t know where you got that idea. Sushi was never “food of the poor masses”. The nigiri sushi started out as street food in Edo (Tokyo), so it’s very much urban in its origin. Sushi stalls went away when people started to care about food safety (after WWII, I think), and since then, sushi has been high-class food. Most Japanese people own’t even try to make it at home. (Although you can get cheap imitations at supermarkets and “conveyor belt” sushi places.)
Sushi is expensive everywhere.
I’ve been in small fishing towns in Japan. I’ve eaten at inns and restaurants that overlook fishing ports and serve fish straight from there. I’ve eaten spiny lobster while its antennae were still twitching. But this was all sashimi, not sushi. Sometimes the sashimi is spread on top of a bowl of plain rice, which makes it a donburi or don - not sushi. (I still remember the uni don I had in the Iwate area - a restaurant right by a fishing port. It must have been an 8-inch bowl completely covered with fresh uni.)
You are an idiot.
Either you are an outright liar or you are being a disingenous little troll, but in the linked Bourdain video in the OP there is no omelette on Jiro’s very traditional tasting menu consisting of various fish sashimi pressed upon vinegared rice, making nigiri (rice balls with sashimi). And then a couple very simple maki with some roe, One boiled shrimp. There is no Tamago on the first page of the link nor anywhere in that video. That was fifteen courses of rice, fish, and seaweed, no egg in sight.
It’s certainly served with similar meals at the very restaurant. See, for instance, this full pictorial spread of a blogger’s return visit to Sukiyabashi Jiro, where tamago is the second-to-last item served. It’s the final item at the blogger’s first visit. (I also agree with those who think they see rice under the tiger shrimp.)
And in this interview with the director of a documentary on Jiro Ono, he says Jiro takes the tamago so seriously that someone must train for 10 years before they’re allowed to work on it.
Oh, I know it is probably served at his restaurant, and very well. But it wasn’t on the tasting menu. That menu was trying to capture the best of the sea, very plainly and unobstructed. Am I an idiot for contending that no matter how hard Jiro or any other sushi chef tries to make an avatar of the sea (no matter how elegant) that the direct experience of the fisherman can never be matched? The True Spirit of Rice and Fish, its essence not experienced until you are on the sea catching and eating your sushi. The OP asks What makes a better sushi chef? I say that experience and knowledge.
Knock it off immediately, both of you. And devilsknew, at this point you have crossed the line into threadshitting. If you don’t want to have a real discussion of sushi, stop posting in this thread.
This is a real discussion of sushi… until everyone came along and twisted my words.
I can also see a seaman and a fisherman long enuff, and tuff enuff, on the seas, having nothing but naturally fermented rice rations in jugs and what he can catch on the sea. No fire.
If i wanted to be a cut above sushi chef, I would let rice naturally ferment, bring it to the sea, and serve the absolutely most fresh local sashimi nigiri.