The Sad State of Sushi

April 21, 7:28 AMDC Ethnic Foods ExaminerJack Fan

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A bowl of Chirashizushi from Osaka Restaurant in
Springfield, VA.  [Photo by Cindy Yun]

The once exotic sushi is so ubiquitous these days that it’s available everywhere - at supermarkets, convenience stores, and even nightclubs.  The demand is so high that it seems anybody can open a sushi bar without prior experience or talent.  Most diners happily consume sloppy cuts of sashimi, poorly composed maki rolls, and machine-formed sushi blocks while complacently paying premium prices.  Two pieces of tuna nigiri range from $3.95 to $5.50 whereas rainbow rolls (shrimp and cucumber wrapped with tuna, salmon and avocado) start at $10.95.  Popular sushi rolls like the California roll (imitation crab meat, cucumber, and avocado) and Philadelphia roll (smoked salmon, cream cheese, and cucumber) cost at least $4.95 but consist of very cheap ingredients.  People pay a lot of money for very little food.  With potential profit margins ranging from 15 to 20 percent (as compared to the restaurant industry’s average of 4 to 7 percent), it’s no wonder people want to get into this lucrative sushi business.

SadlyMost sushi bars are no different from used car dealerships.  They prey on the diner’s ignorance of seafood and propensity to dredge everything in a brownish-green muck of soy sauce and fake wasabi.  They claim to serve only the “freshest fish” but, in reality, the fish has been frozen for 5 to 7 days since being caught and processed.   They willingly (or negligently) serve patrons inferior pieces of fish that are ultimately fishy, mushy, sour, chewy, or simply disgusting.  Some sushi bars continue to serve raw fish well past its peek freshness to save money.  This is most noticeable if fish is flakey, segmented, and falling apart, of if the fish is soggy with pockets of water.  Whether out of fear or ignorance, diners are constantly at the mercy of clueless sushi chefs who are convinced that a pulverized pulp of tuna sashimi can still be “fresh.”  Simply stated, some sushi bars should have no business in serving raw fish.

But there is a silver lining in the current demise of traditional sushi.  A new generation of sushi chefs is rethinking the basic concept of sushi that minimizes or completely avoids the idea of raw fish.  After all, sushi is technically anything served with vinegared rice.  Chef James Tan of Uni - A Sushi Place reinvents the banal sushi bar with fresh innovations like chai tea-smoked tuna and seared salmon with fresh mint.  The secret is a butane torch.  The Extreme Picante Escolar roll has a bite with fresh jalapeno and crispy garlic chips when combined with cilantro, white tuna with chili powder dusted on top.  The Crunchy Spicy Crawfish roll includes real crawfish meat when dipped and fried in tempura batter.  These are new and unheard of ingredients compared to the mundane and tired Spicy Tuna roll.  Yet, it's important to note that not all of Chef Tan's experiments are a smashing success - some are better read than eaten.  The ingredients for the Mango Salmon Roll (salmon, mint, mango, and cucumber) fails to compliment each other.  The texture is duplicative, the flavor muddled, and the sushi roll easily overwhelmed by the sweet sauce.

Other Japanese restaurants are taking notice too.  The hipster restaurant Sticky Rice hardly takes itself seriously with names like Godzirra, The Hot Hippy, or 2000 Leagues.  If a ragtag band of tattooed punk-pirates shanghaied a sushi bar ... this would be it.  Its dishes are creative and exciting with plates like Garden Balls (tempura fried pocket of shiitake mushrooms, red pepper, cilantro and spicy rice in an inari tofu skin and drizzled with eel sauce) and the Chili Roll (which is tuna, cilantro, cucumber, jalapeno & grilled pineapple rolled together and topped with tempura crunchies and tobiko).  Again, even this new sushi ("neozushi") has its limits too.  The Poki ($7.00), which Sticky Rice's version of tuna tartar, comes with a novel lotus root wonton chip but the tuna is salty and over-seasoned.  Moreover, the arrangement fell apart as soon as soon as the plate touched the counter. 

Neozushi's success lies in the fact that it doesn't require high-quality ingredients.  A maki roll no longer focuses on how fresh its ingredients but rather how the ingredients blend together.  The possibilities are endless because the sushi chef is nolonger confined to just seafood.  Instead, sushi becomes a platform akin to tacos and sandwich wraps.  Or, perhaps diners should simply heed the advice of Trevor Corson, author of The Zen of the Fish: The Story of Sushi, From Samurai to Supermarket, and refuse to sit at table or look at menu.  "[Sit] at the bar and ask the chef questions about everything -- what he wants to make us and how we should eat it.  A trip to the neighborhood sushi bar should be a social exchange that celebrates, with a sense of balance and moderation, the wondrous variety of the sea.”