SUSHI 101
Sushi happened when I wasn’t looking.
Eating sushi, or any kind of Japanese food, was not fashionable as I was growing up in Baltimore in the 1960’s.
Chinese food, albeit American style Chinese food, was a cuisine we ate with some regularity. My mother’s favorite was shrimp in lobster sauce. My brother liked egg rolls and spareribs, always with sweet duck sauce, never the spicy mustard sauce. My father liked anything that wasn’t too spicy. My favorite was orange beef.
When I was a child, my family often took the train from Baltimore to visit my New York City grandparents where they sometimes treated us to dinner in Chinatown. It was there, I became determined to use chopsticks. Surrounded by Chinese families, listening to but not understanding their language, I had been transported to an exotic locale a mere four-hour train ride from my house. My ten-year old self thought if I could feed myself with chopsticks, it would make me more like them. That I could be exotic too. Well-meaning waiters would place a fork next to me expecting I’d give up out of frustration…or hunger. But it only made me more pig-headed to pick up every morsel of beef, every grain of rice with chopsticks.
I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I tend to eat my way into the world. Experiencing the world through food, living a food forward life has been my M.O. since I was old enough to, well, teach myself to use chopsticks.
And yet…
Sushi happened when I wasn’t looking.
Sushi happened when I was learning to eat Indian food and Thai food and Greek food and BBQ and Detroit style pizza and paella and gelato. Sushi happened when I visited San Francisco and ate Dim Sum. Sushi happened while I ate lobster rolls in New England. Sushi happened when I had afternoon tea at The Wolseley in London. Sushi happened when I was in the south of France eating Moules-frites.
I didn’t eat sushi until I went to Japan in 2008.
I was in Tokyo because my husband was attending a week-long series of work meetings there. While he was in meetings, I got to explore Tokyo. I know, poor me. After his meetings concluded, we spent the following week in Kyoto, tourists both of us.
In 2008, the Tsukiji Market was the largest wholesale fish market in the world, and it was open to the public. All you had to do was get up at the crack of dawn, find your way to the market, then explore the approximately 900 stalls where the processing of the fish was done. If your timing was right, you might get lucky and witness a fish auction. I was fortunate that Elen, the wife of one of my husband’s colleagues, came with me.
At this point I should mention that I am a dedicated breakfast eater. If I don’t eat breakfast, I am ruined for the day. Getting up early to visit the fish market meant I didn’t have time to eat much more than a piece of toast and sip a coffee. For some, that’s the breakfast of champions. For me, that’s a barebones starter.
“Don’t worry. There’s an enormous outer market with all kinds of vendors and restaurants where we can have some tea and find something to eat”, said Elen.
Sounded good to me.
We arrived at the market a bit on the late side. The sun was just up, a lot of the fish mongers had sold out of fish, the auctions already over. But we walked up and down the still wet, concrete pathways, ogled silvery fish in all sizes, sidestepped buckets of prawns, heard the whir of the band saw, smelled the sea brine lingering in the air.
Visiting the Tsukiji Market was a great start to a day.
But my stomach was rumbling, reminding me that my “starter” breakfast lacked sustenance.
Elen and I found our way to the outer market, basically making a bee line to the first restaurant we saw that was open. It was a hole in the wall, the proprietor an older Japanese woman who, as we were about to discover, ruled the place like an empress.
We each took a seat at the bar, but when Elen said she only wanted tea, she was told in fervent Japanese, she couldn’t sit at the bar if she wasn’t going to eat, that she had to move to the chairs lined up along the wall to wait while I ate.
This was weird. Weirder still was the fact we didn’t just get ourselves out of there. We could have gone to any number of other restaurants that were open.
But we were like two obedient children. And I was hungry, hovering on the edge of hangry, when my decision making is not at its best.
Fortunately, my sushi arrived quickly. I took a deep breath, tried to forget that the fish wasn’t cooked, knowing that I was probably in the best place to eat the freshest fish possible.
The specifics of what I ordered is long forgotten.
I do know I had about six pieces of sushi on a rectangular plate with a dollop of wasabi paste and a small pile of pickled ginger. A small ramekin of soy sauce sat to the side as did a cup of green tea. A pair of wooden chopsticks was placed to my right, enveloped in their white paper wrapper.
Remember, this was the first time I had eaten sushi.
Little did I know the “empress” was watching me like a hawk.
I took a bit of the wasabi on my chopsticks and tried to spread it on top of a piece of sushi. My thought was that the slice of ginger would stick to the wasabi, then I could pick up the piece of sushi with my chopsticks to dunk into the soy sauce.
No sooner had I secured the sushi firmly between my chopsticks when the “empress” started yelling at me, her angry Japanese words unintelligible, her tone completely understandable.
Through her gestures and increasing volume, I finally understood that I was supposed to mix the wasabi into the soy sauce with my chopsticks, dunk the sushi into this mixture, eat the entire piece of sushi in one mouthful, then eat a sliver or two of ginger to cleanse my palate in between bites.
By now, Elen was laughing her ass off behind me, the other customers, all Japanese, were pretending they weren’t laughing, and I pretended I wasn’t completely mortified.
I sat there in my puddle of sushi shame, as I ate every piece of sushi, drank every sip of tea under the watchful eye of the “empress”, not tasting a thing, knowing that I was the exotic one in this scenario.
I was reminded of those Chinatown meals, grateful for my tenacity in learning how to use chopsticks, a skill that was serving me well in Japan, even if I’d just been schooled in sushi 101.
Can you imagine the yelling and the laughter if I’d asked for a fork in that hole in the wall sushi restaurant?
I think I can hear it now, all these years later.
This is a great story, Suzanne! Did I ever tell you about the time I was ridiculed at "the finest trattoria in Rome" for ordering just pasta and a salad? The waiter made fun of me for being American, accused me of having no taste, and was incredibly mean to me, even though I was six months pregnant. He created a HUGE scene in the restaurant. I finally submitted myself to his whims and told him that he could bring me whatever he wanted. Fourteen years later, with more wisdom on my side, I don't know why I didn't walk out, but I was so dumbstruck, I think. Anyways, the worst part was that we went there because the NY Time said they had the best tiramisu in Rome, and the waiter refused to serve it to me because I was pregnant (raw egg). However, I think he was just being spiteful.