One of my friends took me to a nice little sushi restaurant in Tokyo yesterday. They advertise that they have been in business for about three hundred years and they continue to make sushi in the old fashioned way. The shop itself was tiny. You step up to the counter and order the number of pieces that you want, but you can't pick what you'll get. The minimum order is seven if you're going to eat in the restaurant.
There are only a couple of tables and the place wouldn't comfortably sit more than eight or ten customers. The decor is completely unremarkable. My friends and I sat down and each had a steaming hot cup of green tea while we waited for the sushi.
When it came, it was quite a surprise. Each piece was individually wrapped in a Sasa leaf. This is a broad, waxy green leaf that I guess comes from the bamboo family--the ancestor of the pieces of trimmed green plastic you get with sushi these days.
Once the pieces were unwrapped, they weren't terribly large. The rice was also packed lightly by hand--not the incredibly dense stuff you get in a lot of restaurants. All of the fish was cooked or preserved--mackrel, kohada (a shad), shrimp, dried katsuo. This is a nod to the days in which sushi was a way to preserve fish, not a way to serve raw fish.
The flavor was also very distinct. I think that they used a lot more vinegar in the rice than contemporary chefs, and each piece tasted like it had been lightly dusted with salt.
There were no dishes to dump soy sauce and wasabi for dipping, no bowls of pickled ginger. You ate the sushi the way the chef prepared it.
Our waitress brought us each a bowl of soup that had chunks of fresh fish, mushrooms and other veggies in a delicious chicken stock. It was a pretty cold day and this really hit the spot. As we were finishing, the chef came out of the kitchen to see if we liked her sushi, and brought us a big platter of pieces of broiled fish to share.
All in all, it was a great experience. It was a pleasure to eat something that didn't rely on extremes of taste or elaborate combinations of ingredients to make an impression. I like that stuff too, but this was something different. I hope that I get a chance to eat there again. After three hundred years in business, the odds are that they'll still be there when I come back.
There are only a couple of tables and the place wouldn't comfortably sit more than eight or ten customers. The decor is completely unremarkable. My friends and I sat down and each had a steaming hot cup of green tea while we waited for the sushi.
When it came, it was quite a surprise. Each piece was individually wrapped in a Sasa leaf. This is a broad, waxy green leaf that I guess comes from the bamboo family--the ancestor of the pieces of trimmed green plastic you get with sushi these days.
Once the pieces were unwrapped, they weren't terribly large. The rice was also packed lightly by hand--not the incredibly dense stuff you get in a lot of restaurants. All of the fish was cooked or preserved--mackrel, kohada (a shad), shrimp, dried katsuo. This is a nod to the days in which sushi was a way to preserve fish, not a way to serve raw fish.
The flavor was also very distinct. I think that they used a lot more vinegar in the rice than contemporary chefs, and each piece tasted like it had been lightly dusted with salt.
There were no dishes to dump soy sauce and wasabi for dipping, no bowls of pickled ginger. You ate the sushi the way the chef prepared it.
Our waitress brought us each a bowl of soup that had chunks of fresh fish, mushrooms and other veggies in a delicious chicken stock. It was a pretty cold day and this really hit the spot. As we were finishing, the chef came out of the kitchen to see if we liked her sushi, and brought us a big platter of pieces of broiled fish to share.
All in all, it was a great experience. It was a pleasure to eat something that didn't rely on extremes of taste or elaborate combinations of ingredients to make an impression. I like that stuff too, but this was something different. I hope that I get a chance to eat there again. After three hundred years in business, the odds are that they'll still be there when I come back.
