Sushi Cops

Japan’s Agricultural Ministry is on a mission. A mission from the sushi gods. A mission to send out their sushi cops and inspect restaurants the world over to determine whether the sushi you can get in those god forsaken other countries is worthy of the name. (source - Digital Chosunilbo : English version)

They haven’t yet announced how exactly they’re going to enforce the iron laws of the sushi gods - I suspect good restaurants will probably get a nice shiny sticker to put in their window: “Winner of 5 sushi stars!” or “Member of the Holy Order of Sushi Samurai”. They have also not yet announced any criteria, but I suspect that having your customers die from radiation poisoning is not part of the traditional japanese experience they have in mind.

Nor, I would suspect, is the Japanese tradition found just across the road from the hotel where I stayed in Paris - a sushi and yakitori restaurant, run by a Chinese family, with yakitori (literally, fried chicken) made from fish, and as an after dinner drink, the waiter brought us some shokoshu - Chinese fire water.

Despite these differences from the traditional Japanese experience, the sushi was quite good, although figuring out which language to speak to the waiter in was something else entirely…

I’ll have to side with Milly Togasa, a restaurant owner in Bali, whose father was Japanese. She talks in the article of a terrible sushi shop she went to in New York -

I found out that the owner had nothing to do with Japan, neither did the chefs or anybody there. But the people in the neighborhood loved the place and loved the food - so what’s wrong with that?

What, indeed.

Owners of Japanese restaurants abroad might do well to view this archive footage, which details exactly what a sushi shop is like in Japan.

Thursday, November 30th, 2006 Japan, Japanese Culture, Japanese News, Japanese Traditions, Sushi Trackback URL for this entry