By Noriko Takiguchi
The order of sushi eating
Many people miss Toshi Sushi, a popular and vibrant sushi restaurant that used to be on El Camino Real in Menlo Park. But I wonder if everybody knows that Toshi has since opened a fabulous Japanese restaurant, also in Menlo Park on Sharon Park Drive, called Kaygetsu. He has sharpened his intricate style and created an upgraded restaurant which serves a full course kaiseki (a meal served in tea ceremony) as well as la carte dishes and sushi. Looking at him make sushi in a smooth rhythmical way, I almost feel that I am back in Tokyo. Although he has also upgraded the price of sushi, it is worth having such a meal in a nice and calm setting once in a while.
There are many controversies about whether sushi is a formal meal or a casual one. I already described the history of sushi in my Sushi Lesson Part 2, which explains that sushi started as fast food. This proves that it has been a casual food.
However, low or popular culture can creep up to become high culture. Think of kabuki, a traditional Japanese all-male theater which also started in Edo era (17–mid 19 century). The name kabuki comes from a word "kabuku" which describes a state not standing straight up but leaning. People called it so, because kabuki actors were regarded as transients and outside of a normal way of life. It was no high culture. When people went to see a kabuki play, they would eat their box meal during the play, talk with a friend about which actor has what mistress, etc., and yell at the stage if they liked or did not like the acting or the story. So, it was a very noisy atmosphere.
But now, going to see a kabuki play is a formal thing to do in Japanese cultural life. If you are sitting closer to the stage, you would wear something nice, and all the people have to be quiet and appreciate what is going on on the stage.
The same "trading up" applies to sushi, which, after almost two hundred years of time passing, has gained much respect. In this time, some rules have emerged. One is the right order of eating sushi.
Regardless of whether you want to follow it or not, there are some good reasons for this order. The idea is that you should proceed from plainer to richer tastes.
You might want to start with some white fish like bream, red snapper or flatfish, then try what is called “fish with shiny skin” like mackerel, sardine, halfbeak, and dark colored meat fish like bonito, tuna and salmon. You then proceed to squid, octopus and shellfish. Closer to the end, you might want to add sea urchin, salmon roe or some cooked fish like eel or conger that come with thick sauce. To finish, some people order rolled sushi wrapped in fragrant nori (the black sea weed) or even tamago (omelet) as almost like a dessert.
This order allows your tongue to taste every piece delicately. If you eat very rich fatty-tuna in the beginning, your tongue might become too numb to enjoy the sensitive taste of red snapper after that. I hear some sushi chefs are quite keen about in what order his customer eat sushi, while others say you should eat sushi as you like in the order you feel like.
As for myself, I cannot pass up having tuna in my first order as an earnest tuna lover, but I might try a more strict order soon, to see if I taste things differently. I once sat next to a man in Tokyo who kept ordering fish I have never heard of, and I wish I knew as many fish kinds as he did. He looked like an exact sushi connoisseur and must have had a much-extended arena for sushi eating. Noriko Takiguchi's blog
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