PL here ...
A science fiction editor I know pretty well - you won't be able to guess who she is, she hasn't edited any of my books - once said that if she wanted to eat raw fish and seaweed, she could go stretch out on some sea shore, face to the ocean, and open her mouth...
Well, aside from not working very well in winter - unless you're a member of the Polar Bear Club, which is another story - what you can get to eat in a Japanese sushi restaurant, whether raw fish or seaweed, is a lot more tasty. In fact, sushi is my favorite food.
Or tied for first place with Italian food - vongole (clams) or calamari (squid) to be exact...
But sushi is a cold, sweet, salty protein rush. Not everyone likes it - but it's a lot more than you can get, mouth open, at the shore. A significant joy of sushi is the vinegared rice, which not only tastes great but keeps the fish fresh. And of course the mix of fish could never swim up on any single shore. Sushi comes in pieces and various kinds of rolls. Each piece is a mini-food pyramid, with protein (fish), carbs (rice), and vegetable (seaweed). If you order piece by piece, you can easily control how much you eat, even better than with Chinese dim sum and Spanish tapas. Your high school fitness teacher should have loved it.
My wife introduced me to sushi back in the 1970s. Her boss loved it (he lived to a ripe old age). Now I actually eat more more sushi than she does.
Here are a few of my favorites, with explanations:
White tuna: I get it whenever I can. It's much more vibrant than any regular tuna, including Yellow Tail, which is quite good.
Ebi: This is sweet, raw shrimp ... and it's sweeter than sugar ...
Soft-shell crab: Served in any way is delicious. I like mine in a "roll" - crab on the inside, seaweed wrapping, rice in the middle ... the soft-shell crab is cooked ...
Well, that's more than enough dinner for me. I included the soft-shell crab not only because it's delicious but because it's cooked. Most sushi shrimp, unlike the raw Ebi, is cooked, too. These are good entry morsels into the world of sushi, if you're squeamish about eating fish raw. But, look, lox is raw, and you've probably eaten some of that at one time or another. Tuna sushi is just lox's next-door neighbor.
Miso soup, made from soy, is a good way to start - the darker the better. Edamame - soy beans in their pods, boiled or steamed - is a scrumptious and very healthy appetizer. Green tea is great to sip with sushi. Plum wine is fine, and sake is smooth and transcendental.
If you have room for dessert, I'd go with red-bean ice cream.
A science fiction editor I know pretty well - you won't be able to guess who she is, she hasn't edited any of my books - once said that if she wanted to eat raw fish and seaweed, she could go stretch out on some sea shore, face to the ocean, and open her mouth...
Well, aside from not working very well in winter - unless you're a member of the Polar Bear Club, which is another story - what you can get to eat in a Japanese sushi restaurant, whether raw fish or seaweed, is a lot more tasty. In fact, sushi is my favorite food.
Or tied for first place with Italian food - vongole (clams) or calamari (squid) to be exact...
But sushi is a cold, sweet, salty protein rush. Not everyone likes it - but it's a lot more than you can get, mouth open, at the shore. A significant joy of sushi is the vinegared rice, which not only tastes great but keeps the fish fresh. And of course the mix of fish could never swim up on any single shore. Sushi comes in pieces and various kinds of rolls. Each piece is a mini-food pyramid, with protein (fish), carbs (rice), and vegetable (seaweed). If you order piece by piece, you can easily control how much you eat, even better than with Chinese dim sum and Spanish tapas. Your high school fitness teacher should have loved it.My wife introduced me to sushi back in the 1970s. Her boss loved it (he lived to a ripe old age). Now I actually eat more more sushi than she does.
Here are a few of my favorites, with explanations:
White tuna: I get it whenever I can. It's much more vibrant than any regular tuna, including Yellow Tail, which is quite good.
Ebi: This is sweet, raw shrimp ... and it's sweeter than sugar ...
Soft-shell crab: Served in any way is delicious. I like mine in a "roll" - crab on the inside, seaweed wrapping, rice in the middle ... the soft-shell crab is cooked ...
Well, that's more than enough dinner for me. I included the soft-shell crab not only because it's delicious but because it's cooked. Most sushi shrimp, unlike the raw Ebi, is cooked, too. These are good entry morsels into the world of sushi, if you're squeamish about eating fish raw. But, look, lox is raw, and you've probably eaten some of that at one time or another. Tuna sushi is just lox's next-door neighbor.
Miso soup, made from soy, is a good way to start - the darker the better. Edamame - soy beans in their pods, boiled or steamed - is a scrumptious and very healthy appetizer. Green tea is great to sip with sushi. Plum wine is fine, and sake is smooth and transcendental.
If you have room for dessert, I'd go with red-bean ice cream.
7 comments:
I used to think there was good Japanese food in New York, until I lived in Japan. Don't get me wrong there exists good Japanese food in New York, but you really have to look for it.
When I was back in town to do my Masters, I ate some of the most wretched imitations of Japanese food ever foisted upon a restaurant-goer in the history of restaurants. The problem is, most Japanese restaurants in the US are owned and operated by an assortment of other Asian ethnic groups.
The Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, and other Southeast Asians open Japanese restaurants for the cache factor that allows them to charge double what they would for their own ethnic cuisine. The results are generally mixed, skewing to the inedible.
My wife and I tried a dozen different Japanese restaurants in Manhattan while we were back and none of them was remotely acceptable. She worked her way through undergrad at Japanese restaurants in the borough, of course owned and operated by Japanese, and they were all quite good, and ranged from Waldorf prices to neighborhood menus.
The Japanese government has been discussing for years a type of certification of Japanese restaurants that would show which are authentic and which are not. I used to think it was incredibly snooty and xenophobic, but now I understand why. What you get in most Japanese restaurants around the world is barely Japanese.
The people who rate for Zagat's have shown a lack of understanding about the authentic Japanese cuisine as we found that none of their recommendations was acceptable. The point of Zagat's is to appeal to the audience, but we both felt that they needed to pay at least some attention to authenticity and probably needed a Japanese consultant to help them with their ratings.
It's said that something like 1-4% of Japanese restaurants in New York are operated by Japanese. The reason is, to own or operate a business one must plant roots in a community. The Japanese generally are not an immigrant group to the United States, preferring to instead stay short term and go back. This is a problem for good, authentic Japanese food.
The one positive to say about Japanese food in New York is that the quality of fish that's available is so good that it ends up being hard to mess up for the most part. In fact, the fish available in New York via the Sound and New England is of such quality that it's often flash frozen and flown to Japan if you can imagine. The main issue with sushi in New York is the tendency of less scrupulous sushi chefs to take shitty cuts of fish and chop it up with some mayonnaise or other condiments to hide the taste and texture. The other two issues are the fiberous cuts that many cheaper restaurants serve to less sophisticated customers that would be cat food in Japan, and the tendency to skimp on fish by putting a thinner cut on top of a fat piece of rice. That always makes me want to take the knife out of the chefs hand and cut my own piece.
If you find a good place it's a good idea to stick with them and let them know you appreciate their quality. Spreading the word, or blogging about which places are good and which are suspect is also a way to force an improvement in quality.
By the way, my favorite sushi are O-toro, saba, and the old standby, maguro. One sushi etiquette note for Westerners...
Use less soy sauce in your dish and refill. A giant pool of soy sauce is unattractive and amateurish. Also less wasabi shows you appreciate the taste of the fish. There's already a small amount of wasabi under the fish anyway. Check and if there is enough don't even bother adding it in your soy sauce!! Enjoy!!
I guess we're lucky here in Westchester - we've been eating at Ichi Riki in Elmsford for more than 20 years ... it's currently owned and operated by a Japanese couple, and the previous owners were Japanese, too ... Highly recommended.
You might find my post on White Tuna interesting.
Oh hey, look at that, you're here in westchester. Well in THAT case, you should get over to Sushi Mikes in Dobbs Ferry (good sushi, not necessarily "authentic") and Hajime in Harrison (very authentic). However, its a shame you've got your heart set on sushi as you could expand into the other interesting cuisines of japan at three places close to Grand Central: Sushi Yasuda, Sakagura (across the street), or Hagi (a 10 minute walk, be sure to get the cherrystone clams).
When you get into sake, post a note on my blog so I can point you at the tastings :)
SushiNorth - just read your post on white tuna - thanks - but I find white tuna the complete opposite of bland and watery ... I guess, different strokes for different folks...
Thanks for the restaurant recommendation -my wife and I will check them out. We actually love all Japanese food - my wife likes lots of other Japanese food even better than sushi. The cherrystone clams at Hagi sound very tempting!
Mike - I forgot to thank you for your excellent post. Not to worry - I never use soy sauce, and no wasabi (unless it's already in the sushi)...
My favorites are uni (sea urchin roe) with quail egg (which just grosses my wife out) and saba (mackerel), which she likes even more than I do.
Fortunately, in the Bay Area, good sushi is easy to find. In fact, our little town of Boulder Creek, last stop north on Hwy 9 before nothing, is getting a sushi bar--within walking distance of our house!
Walking distance is fabulous!
We're a 5-minute or less car ride, but walking distance trumps that!
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