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A Magnificent Obsession That Starts With Rice and Fish

April 21, 2004
By JULIA MOSKIN

WHAT is great sushi? Of course, said Seki, the chef and
owner of Sushi Seki on First Avenue, great sushi needs
great fish. But, he continued, great fish is not enough.

"Sushi is so simple that each element must be perfect, and
all the elements must be balanced," he said. "Like pizza."

Like pizza, sushi can be downed as a quick lunch or dwelt
upon obsessively for a lifetime. Once your sushi
consciousness has been raised, it becomes a pleasure to
appreciate its subtle distinctions: the rice should be
warm, so that the chilled fish begins to approach body
temperature before the piece goes into your mouth; nori,
seaweed sheets used for rolling maki, should be thin and
crisp, instead of tough and leathery; the wasabi and gari
(pickled ginger) should be freshly made.

In Japan, aficionados judge a sushi chef by more than the
quality of his fish. ("His" because there are almost no
women who are sushi chefs in Japan: legend has it that
women's hands are too warm to make sushi.) The proportion
of rice to fish is carefully considered. Even the arc
described by a piece of sushi fish as it rests on top of
the rice has a prescribed shape.

"It should have the same curve as the pages of a book, when
you open it and place it on a table" said Gen Mizoguchi,
the sushi chef at the new Megu in TriBeCa. Traditional
sushi chefs arrange the pieces in rows to mimic the
appearance of a school of fish swimming.

Despite this cultural and culinary baggage, it is worth
noting that sushi began not as an elegant way to eat raw
fish but as a way to preserve it. Packed between layers of
cooked rice, whole raw fish fermented slowly instead of
rotting, becoming lightly pickled. That pickled flavor is
still a faint but essential element in sushi. It is why
sushi rice is sprinkled with vinegar.

Sushi, at its most basic, consists of a finger of rice
draped with a slice of raw fish, ideally in a proportion of
about 4 to 1, according to Nobu Ishida, whose Apollo Fish
Company, in Maspeth, N.Y., supplies top sushi chefs in New
York at Nobu, Masa and Sushi Yasuda.

That proportion is not always observed in New York sushi
bars. In the 1990's, sushi lovers had their heads turned by
the large pieces of fish served in New York at places like
Tomoe Sushi and Japonica.

"Big pieces is the Korean style of sushi," Mr. Ishida said.
"There are so many sushi chefs in New York now, and many of
them are from Korea or trained with Korean sushi chefs."
But Japanese chefs like Masatoshi Sugio of Sushi of Gari on
the Upper East Side have now swung the pendulum the other
way, toward small pieces that can be eaten in one bite and
are thought to be more elegant.

Fish gets most of the attention at sushi bars, but Koji
Imai, an owner of Megu and a culinary celebrity in Japan
for championing artisanal ingredients, says that rice is
the most important ingredient. "The rice comes first, and
then what goes on top of it," he said. (The word sushi is a
synthesis of the words for rice and vinegar.) Mr. Imai said
that the rice for Megu is grown to his specifications, so
the quality is assured, but that the wildly varying
humidity of Manhattan's weather causes headaches at the
sushi bar. "The formula that works for cooking rice in
Japan doesn't always work here," he said wearily.

Mr. Imai popped a ball of rice into his mouth, assumed a
thoughtful expression and gestured his approval. "A lot of
the rice in American sushi bars is cold and sticky," he
said. "When the rice is not good, the fish can't be good
either."

Mr. Imai's affection for the artisanal ingredients of Japan
verges on the finicky (the restaurant recommends different
soy sauces for sushi and sashimi), but a taste of Megu's
freshly grated imported wasabi root, with its green,
bracing flavor, is convincingly different. "I am from
Shizuoka Prefecture, where the wasabi here comes from," one
waiter confided. "And I never got to eat it there - it's
too expensive."

Wasabi was originally added to sushi for its ostensible
antibacterial properties: according to tradition, a dab of
grated wasabi between the fish and the rice helped street
vendors keep their sushi fresh and could mask any
developing off-odors at the end of a long hot day. Today,
the wasabi most often served at sushi bars is
overwhelmingly sharp and not wasabi at all: it is a paste
made of mustard, dry horseradish and green food coloring.

True wasabi is not even related to horseradish. It is in
the mustard family. A single wasabi root takes about three
years to grow to harvest size, making it expensive, about
$40 a root. When a sushi bar buys a root, the wasabi is
grated to order in small quantities on a traditional grater
of rough shark skin. Fresh wasabi has been available in the
United States for some time, but most of it is grown in
Oregon, and Mr. Ishida said its flavor is not as strong as
the Japanese variety. Koji Ohneda, a manager at Sushi Seki
who has worked in sushi restaurants in New York for almost
20 years, said: "We used to have the stewardesses from
Japan Air Lines smuggle it through customs. We paid them
for the service in sushi."

Sushi Seki is notable for the crispness of its nori, the
sheets of pressed seaweed that are used to roll rice and
fish together to make maki. Instead of the usual resistance
and chew, a bite into maki made by Seki, who uses only one
name, produces a satisfying crunch. "Of course, the quality
starts with the farmer," Seki said.

The seaweed farmer?

"Farmers and fishermen collect the seaweed and make it into
a paste, then sell that to the producers," he explained.
"That's why some batches are different from others." Tough
nori is usually old nori: seaweed, once dried, has a
tendency to grab moisture from the air, which makes it soft
instead of crisp. Masa Takayama of Masa, like many
attentive sushi chefs, toasts each sheet of nori
individually, to dry it until crackling and crisp.

But when all is said and done, crisp nori, house-made gari,
fresh wasabi and artisanal soy sauce are just supporting
players, as the beautifully lighted fish case at Masa
reminds you. Raw fish is the star - and, like many stars,
it may be older than it looks. Much of the sushi sold in
Japan and the United States has been frozen at some point
before it reaches the sushi bar, both to preserve its
quality and to eliminate the parasites that are common in
wild fish.

Naomichi Yasuda, the chef and an owner of Sushi Yasuda in
Midtown, says that he ages almost all of his fish after he
receives it so that the rigor mortis that affects freshly
killed fish has time to pass off. Mr. Yasuda wraps the fish
in paper-thin sheets of cedar wood and checks it often,
waiting until the flesh is melting but not yet soft or
mushy: in most cases, he says, this takes one to two days.
"There is such a thing as fish that is too fresh," he said.