Raw tastes and colours

Just as in the case of marmite, you either love or you hate sushi. When it comes to new foods and new tastes, I have always been open-minded. My motto is: “As long as it’s cooked properly, I’ll give anything a try.” The problem with sushi is that most of the main ingredients are raw.

So, what’s the attraction? After all, it is just a piece of raw fish on a bed of rice with a sliver of pickled ginger, a tiny dash of very powerful mustard called wasabi and a few drops of soya sauce. And that’s exactly it! Sushi is such an artistic ritual from careful preparation and presentation and all the way to consumption. I often find myself fascinated at YouTube videos showing chefs artfully preparing colourful bites of carefully sliced, diced, chopped, folded, wrapped ingredients and placing them in front mesmerised customers in Tokyo’s backstreet sushi joints. 

Nowadays, even supermarkets sell selections of sushi trays alongside BLT sandwiches and salad bowls. We have come a long way.

Long before Yo! Sushi invaded Britain’s high streets and out of town shopping centre, there was only one genuine Japanese restaurant in the whole of the Northeast. A tiny place in the middle of a terrace of shops, snuggled in between a tobacconist and a hairdresser’s in Felling. The entrance draped with the usual split curtain led to a room that seated no more than twenty diners at any one time. At the far end, behind the counter, sat the owner, a sumo-wrestler of a chef, sporting a white kimono with large Japanese characters on the breasts. He welcomed newcomers with a grunt and continued rolling sticky rice in nori seaweed sheets.

I once dined there with my good friend Didier, the most famous French chef Hartlepool ever had. We loved it so much that I promised to share the experience with Karen one day. She took a lot of persuasion but finally, one Monday night in the early nineties, we entered the sushi emporium, called Fume, if I can remember rightly. 

“I am not having any raw stuff, by the way!” She insisted. I explained that the restaurant also served cooked dishes, such as chicken yakitori or teriyaki and tempura prawns among other things.

We ordered. Raw stuff on my side of the table and cooked on hers. Everyone was happy until I persuaded Karen to try a bit of raw salmon wrapped in rice and seaweed. One tiny, careful bite sufficed to make her balk and spit the morsel into her napkin. She washed it down with wine and water but couldn’t get rid of the seaweed taste. I could tell that I’d be in the doghouse for a fairly long time. 

We finished the meal. I asked for the bill. It came inside a lacquered box along with two tiny biscuits. Assuming they were  a Japanese version of the usual after-dinner mints, Karen quickly  grabbed one in an attempt to get rid of the lingering bad taste in her mouth, took a bite and spat it out in her napkin once again. It happened to be a Japanese sesame biscuit wrapped in seaweed. 

Nowadays, whenever I suggest going to a Japanese restaurant, I get the evil eye. “You can go on your own!”