Sushiyama
Sushi is, contrary to popular opinion, originally a Chinese dish and not a Japanese dish. The Chinese first discovered the appealing flavors of combining fermented rice and salted (not cooked) fish, which were introduced for practical reasons of keeping the food bacteria-free. They first did this in about 200 B.C. and in another 1,000 years, the concept found its way across the Sea of Japan and onto the menu of the upper class residents of Japan. It got a mention in the local tax code (the Yoro Code), so we can presume it was then a bit of a delicacy. But it quickly gained popularity and three sushi restaurants opened in Edo, the ancient village that eventually turned into the 14 million-person megalopolis of Tokyo. Sushi found its way across the Pacific to the U.S. in the early 20th Century, particularly on the West Coast due to the growing immigration of Japanese to America on that path. It’s thought that the first real sushi restaurant was in Los Angeles and was called Kawafuku. It offered such Asian delicacies as Sukiyaki, Yakatori, Gyoza, Yakisoba, and this strange raw fish dish called sushi. Just like Yakisoba migrated to a more Americanized Chow Mien, sushi expanded its repertoire with things like the California Roll, with the introduction of distinctly California ingredients like avocado.
Sushi started gaining traction in the United States after WWII as more G.I.’s gained exposure in post-war Japan, but the whole raw fish thing took another twenty years to become an acquired taste to the American palate. Today, there are purportedly over 4,000 sushi restaurants in the United States, probably not including the sushi rolls you can get in any number of gas station quick-marts. I think its fair to say that very few American’s haven’t tried eating sushi. More importantly, I think that while sushi is a bit of a controversial food that engenders lots of dislike, an even greater number of people go crazy for the stuff and can’t get enough. That is saying a lot, especially since sushi is pretty pricey by any standards among good quality restaurant food. The best sushi costs considerably more than the “normal” prime steaks like ribeye. A Wagyu or Kobe steak can get about as pricey as good sushi, but I know that when i splurge and order Wagyu, due to the high fat content (which is, quite frankly, what makes it so good), I suffice with a very small portion. My observation of sushi eaters is that the “healthy” sense associated with eating sushi gives them free license to gorge themselves on the stuff.
My first introduction to sushi occurred on my first day as a banker in 1976. It was mid-June and I had reported for duty at 280 Park Avenue (between 48th and 49th streets) bright and early. It took the Europe Division capos the whole morning to bounce me back and forth between the South and North Europe teams, ending up with me sitting on the right hand of Kristoph Pfeiffer, a Harvard-educated veteran who ran the northern Germanic countries of West Germany, Austria and Switzerland. But Kris was busy for lunch that day, so the task of taking the new guy to lunch fell on Jim Cantalini, a Chicago MBA who was five years older than me and, as a newly minted Assistant Treasurer, was assigned to the Iberian desk. Jim is still one of those timeless guys who looks like he just got out of business school. In the summer of 1976 he seemed like a very savvy New Yorker to a hayseed transplant like me. He took me to one of the very shi-shi second floor sushi dens on the second floor on 48th Street off Madison. As we walked in, Jim just turned and said to me, “You like sushi, right?” as we were being led to our small table in the overcrowded restaurant. I never answered that question because I had no idea how I liked sushi since I had never had it or even really heard of it. When I looked at the menu I had a small sense of foreboding since I was seeing a lot of seafood. When I saw tuna roll, I figured that might be OK since I didn’t love tuna fish salad, but I could at least stomach the stuff.
What came to the table was a woodblock with about twenty pieces of seaweed-wrapped rice cylinders with a small dap of raw tuna at the center. It didn’t look inviting to me at all, but I had ordered it and I was in a restaurant so I popped one into my mouth hoping that the total immersion on approach would prove to be an easier way to get the thing down my throat. What hit me in that moment was best described as total revulsion. I do not really know what about the taste sensation was most unpleasant to me. It probably wasn’t the actual raw tuna since that was such a small part of it. People tell me that seaweed is actually quite tasteless, but I have always thought it was the seaweed. But as I read about the history of how sushi is made, it may well have been the fermented rice that was so objectionable to me. Overall, I had a problem no matter what was making my eyes bug out and my heart palpitate. I thought about spitting it all out into my napkin, but could not imagine a subtle way to do that in a crowded midtown eatery. So, with as little chewing as was absolutely necessary, realizing that any mastication would lead to even greater revulsion, I swallowed the offending foodstuff and began to consider my options of what I would tell Mr. Cantalini without sounding like a complete uncouth moron.
Just then, two other people from the Europe Division at Bankers Trust showed up to take the table directly next to us. After a moment of pleasantries (obviously, I didn’t know either the blonde-haired smiling Swedish woman or the slick-looking cosmopolitan Dutchman), I simply turned to them and asked if they would like an appetizer. They were surprised by the offer, but I quickly moved the woodblock with the 19 pieces of Kryptonite over to their small table and told them to have at it. I said I was full. They thanked me and immediately began to savor every bite of that horrid stuff. As Cantalini and I left the restaurant, I realized that it was a foreshadowing of the ways of the New York banking world that Mr. Cantalini didn’t realize for one moment that I had pretty much not eaten a thing of my lunch. Such are the distracted and self-centered ways of the Wall Street world I was entering.
I thanked Mr. Cantalini once we were back on the sidewalk and then made an excuse about an errand and ran to a distant corner where he could not see me buying dirty-water hot dog from a street vendor and having a quick and overdue lunch on my first day in the working world of New York City. I only tried sushi one other time about twenty-five years later during a business lunch in Encino. That time, my colleague ordered a “Caterpillar”, which was a creative-looking California sushi roll fashioned on its plate to look like a green caterpillar. It was then that I learned that there were things in life worse than sushi…like sushi with avocado. Since then I have stayed away from sushi entirely.
Tonight we went to Sushiyama restaurant in Escondido to have dinner with brother-in-law Jeff and Lisa and two of their friends, George and Julie. I have been to that sushi restaurant several times to meet them all for dinner and I know the drill there very well. First, I ask for a fork, which is how I keep from pretending to like chopstix. Then I order Gyoza ( beef dumplings) and Yakisoba (chow mien noodles with beef). That is my kind of sushi.