58 Fun Facts About Hard Sushi

Why was Sukiyabashi Jiro dropped from the Michelin Guide in November 2019?

Michelin said it does not take reservations from the general public: Jiro accepts bookings only through luxury-hotel concierges, so the three-star Ginza counter no longer met the guide's listing rules.

Which US president ate at Sukiyabashi Jiro with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe?

Barack Obama dined at Sukiyabashi Jiro with Shinzo Abe on the first night of his April 2014 state visit; Abe said Obama called it the best sushi he had ever eaten.

Who directed the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi?

Gelb had originally planned a multi-chef film nicknamed 'Planet Sushi'; he later created the Netflix series Chef's Table.

Whose minimalist compositions dominate the soundtrack of Jiro Dreams of Sushi?

The director said the repetitive, escalating music was a metaphor for a chef doing the same routine daily while reaching for one more step of improvement.

A 2013 fire at Sukiyabashi Jiro was traced to what?

A chef had returned the straw to the storeroom, where it most likely ignited. It took about an hour to put out and nobody was hurt.

Which critic gave Sushi Nakazawa a perfect four-star New York Times review in 2013?

Pete Wells awarded Sushi Nakazawa four stars in December 2013, months after it opened; owner Alessandro Borgognone had recruited Daisuke Nakazawa after watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Kiyoshi Kimura, the 'Tuna King' of Japan's New Year auction, founded which chain?

Kimura's Kiyomura Corporation runs the Sushi Zanmai chain; he repeatedly topped the New Year tuna auction, paying 155.4 million yen for a 222 kg bluefin in 2013.

Near which town was the record 333.6 million yen bluefin of 2019 caught?

Ōma, at the northern tip of Aomori Prefecture, is famous for line-caught bluefin. The winning bid worked out to roughly $5,000 a pound.

Toyosu, the fish market that replaced Tsukiji, sits in which Tokyo ward?

Toyosu Market lies in Kōtō ward on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay; at about 408,000 square metres it is nearly twice the size of old Tsukiji.

What had previously occupied the Toyosu site, whose toxic soil delayed Tokyo's fish market move by two years?

The site had been a Tokyo Gas plant; Tokyo spent an extra 3.8 billion yen on wells to pump out contaminated groundwater before the market finally opened in October 2018.

Tsukiji fish market opened in 1935 to replace an older market that had been destroyed by what?

The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake destroyed Tokyo's old central fish market, which was already slated for relocation over its unsanitary conditions; the Tsukiji rebuild took over six years.

Before Tsukiji, in which district did Tokyo's fish market stand for centuries?

The Nihonbashi uogashi grew after Tokugawa Ieyasu brought fishermen from Tsukuda near Osaka to Edo in 1590 to supply the castle; whatever the castle did not buy was sold by the bridge.

Which British phycologist, honoured in Japan as the 'Mother of the Sea', rescued the post-war nori industry?

Kathleen Drew-Baker's 1949 discovery that the shell-boring 'conchocelis' is a phase of Porphyra's life cycle let Japanese growers seed nori artificially; Uto in Kumamoto honours her with a monument and an April festival.

Sheet nori (ita-nori) was invented in Asakusa around 1750 by borrowing the method of which other craft?

Edo-era makers adapted Japanese paper-making, spreading chopped nori on frames to dry into sheets; before that nori was eaten as a paste, and sheets made makizushi possible decades later.

The most prized 'shin-nori', from the first harvest of the year, is cultivated in which Japanese sea?

Ariake lies off Kyushu. Top-grade sheets can cost around 90 cents each in the US, versus about six cents for common Chinese-grown nori.

Most nori is made from red algae of which genus?

Pyropia yezoensis and Pyropia tenera, moved out of Porphyra in a 2011 reclassification, are the main nori species; farmed plants grow on nets at the sea surface and can be harvested about 45 days after seeding.

The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to researchers who used wasabi vapour to build what?

Sniffing wasabi acts like smelling salts; one deaf test subject woke within ten seconds of the vapour being sprayed into his sleeping chamber.

The Daio Wasabi Farm in Azumino, the world's largest commercial wasabi farm, is in which prefecture?

Azumino lies in Nagano Prefecture; Daio's roughly 15 hectares of wasabi beds are fed by cold spring water from the Northern Japan Alps. Shizuoka's Izu Peninsula is the other great wasabi region.

Where do sushi chefs traditionally place the wasabi in a piece of nigiri, so its flavour is preserved?

Chefs tuck the wasabi between the fish and the rice, shielding it from air; fresh wasabi paste loses its punch within minutes, which is also why top restaurants grate it to order.

Kabuki actor Bandō Mitsugorō VIII died in 1975 after eating four servings of which part of a fugu?

Mitsugorō ate four servings of fugu liver, the organ where tetrodotoxin concentrates, claiming he could resist the poison; serving fugu liver in restaurants was banned nationwide in 1984.

Japan's largest wholesale fugu market is in which city?

Shimonoseki's Haedomari market handles most of Japan's fugu; locals there say 'fuku', a homonym for good fortune, and hold an annual ceremony releasing hundreds of fugu into the sea.

In Kansai slang fugu is nicknamed 'teppō', a word meaning what?

Teppō means gun: the joke is that 'ataru', to be hit, also means to get food poisoning, so a fugu dinner can go off like a gunshot.

In which year did Japan's fugu deaths peak at 176, the same year chef licensing was introduced?

176 people died of fugu poisoning in 1958, the year chef licensing began; applicants serve a two- or three-year apprenticeship and sit written, identification and practical exams that only about a third pass.

Uni, the part of the sea urchin eaten as sushi, is actually which organ?

Uni is the urchin's gonads: menus euphemise it as 'roe', but both male and female urchins are eaten, each carrying five of the orange lobes arranged in a star inside the shell.

Hamachi, often sold as 'yellowtail tuna', actually belongs to which family?

Around 120,000 tonnes a year are farmed from wild fry scooped up under floating seaweed each May.

Farmed Japanese amberjack is called hamachi at about 3 kg and what once it reaches 5 kg?

Buri is the name for the fully grown fish; its winter fattiness as 'kan-buri' makes it a seasonal delicacy of Himi in Toyama and the Hokuriku coast.

Ōgiya, a tamagoyaki shop trading in Ōji since 1648, appears in an ukiyo-e print series by which artist?

Utagawa Hiroshige included Ōgiya in his 'Famous Restaurants of Edo' print series; the shop also turns up in the rakugo tale 'Ōji no kitsune', whose trickster fox is treated to a meal there.

Traditionally made gari turns naturally pink only under what condition?

Only very young ginger, with its pink tips, turns naturally pink in vinegar; mature ginger stays yellowish, so many commercial brands add beet juice, red shiso or the dye E124 for the colour diners expect.

The Japanese word 'ikura' for salmon roe is borrowed from which language?

Ikura comes from the Russian 'ikra', which means any fish roe or caviar; Japanese narrowed it to salmon eggs, usually cured in soy sauce and sake.

Masago, the cheaper roe often swapped in for tobiko, comes from which fish?

Masago is the roe of the capelin, a small smelt; tobiko is flying-fish roe and sits between masago and salmon ikura in size, at 0.5 to 0.8 mm per egg.

Black tobiko gets its colour from what natural ingredient?

Squid ink dyes tobiko black; yuzu turns it pale yellow and wasabi turns it green and spicy, so a single serving can show several colours.

Anago, the sweeter and less oily eel that is usually simmered for sushi, is what kind of eel?

Unagi is the freshwater eel, usually grilled with kabayaki sauce; anago normally means the conger Conger myriaster.

A traditional hangiri, the tub for cooling sushi rice, is made from which wood?

Hangiri are traditionally made of sawara cypress bound with copper hoops; sizes run from about 30 cm across for home use to a metre wide in restaurants, and the rice is turned with a shamoji paddle.

The long, thin yanagiba knife used to slice fish for nigiri and sashimi is named after which tree?

Yanagiba means 'willow blade', after the leaf's long, slender shape; it is ground on one side only and used in a single pulling stroke rather than pushed.

A makisu rolling mat is traditionally woven from bamboo and what?

Thin bamboo slats are bound with cotton string; the same mat shapes tamagoyaki and squeezes liquid from cooked greens, and in Korea the equivalent gimbal is used for gimbap.

The 'sushi burrito' was created in 2008 by Peter Yen at a fast-casual restaurant in which city?

Yen's San Francisco restaurant Sushirrito, which opened downtown in 2011, spread the format through US foodie culture despite critics dismissing it as an oversized maki roll.

'Sushi pizza', a fried rice patty topped with fish, is a signature dish of which city?

It was devised no later than 1993 by chef Kaoru Ohsada at Nami Japanese Seafood Restaurant and became a Toronto classic alongside the peameal bacon sandwich.

The spicy tuna roll was invented in the 1980s by Jean Nakayama of the Maneki restaurant in which city?

Nakayama created it at Maneki in Los Angeles, mixing tuna scraps with chilli sauce; it is a close cousin of Japanese negitoro, which uses scallions instead of heat.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Philadelphia roll is usually named after which city instead?

The Seattle roll is the local name for the smoked-salmon-and-cream-cheese roll; like most Western rolls it is made inside-out, with the rice outside, to hide the nori early American diners peeled off.

Which sushi roll is named after a river goblin said to love cucumbers?

Kappa maki, the cucumber roll, takes its name from the kappa, a water goblin of Japanese folklore whose favourite food is the cucumber.

By one account, Tokyo Kaikan chef Ichiro Mashita invented the California roll by swapping avocado for what?

Mashita is said to have reached for avocado when toro, fatty tuna, was out of season, its oiliness standing in for the fish; the earliest versions reportedly used king crab legs, as imitation crab was not yet available.

Kawafuku, called the first authentic US sushi bar, opened in the 1960s in which neighbourhood?

Kawafuku added its counter in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo in 1966; Noritoshi Kanai of importer Mutual Trading is credited with persuading the owner to open a sushi bar staffed by a chef trained in Japan.

Nobu Matsuhisa's signature fusion style blends Japanese technique with the ingredients of which country, where he ran a restaurant in the 1970s?

Matsuhisa moved to Lima, Peru, at 24 in 1973 and improvised with local chilli and citrus, the root of his Japanese-Peruvian style; a later Anchorage restaurant burned down weeks after opening.

Which actor became Nobu Matsuhisa's partner and co-founded the first Nobu in Tribeca in 1994?

Robert De Niro met Matsuhisa as a regular at his La Cienega Boulevard restaurant and backed the 1994 Tribeca opening; Nobu later had a cameo alongside De Niro in Casino.

Nearly all of Japan's kaiten-zushi conveyor belts are made in which prefecture?

Ishikawa Prefecture is home to Ishino Seisakusho in Kanazawa and to Nippon Crescent, the makers that supply most of Japan's belts; their plastic crescent-plate chains run on edge to manage a restaurant's tight corners.

Which sushi chain's 2021 Taiwan promotion led dozens to legally add 'salmon' to their names?

Sushiro's two-day offer of free sushi for anyone with 'salmon' in their name was dubbed 'salmon chaos'; the chain's parent lost about 16 billion yen in market value after a 2023 soy-sauce-licking video at a Gifu branch.

In which Tokyo district did chef Yuki Chizui open Japan's first all-female sushi restaurant in 2010?

Nadeshico Sushi opened in Akihabara in 2010 with an all-female crew; the itamae's trade had traditionally been reserved for men, with the apprentice rank below called wakiita, 'near the cutting board'.

A Kyushu-style scattered sushi flavours its base with what instead of vinegar?

Kagoshima's sake-zushi moistens the rice with local sweet sake rather than vinegar and layers it with shrimp, sea bream, octopus, shiitake, bamboo shoots and shredded omelette.

Compared with a modern piece, roughly how large was the rice in Hanaya Yohei's Edo-era nigiri?

Edo nigiri also used half as much vinegar, more salt instead of sugar, and red vinegar made from sake lees.

The green plastic 'baran' dividers in supermarket sushi trays replaced cut leaves of which plant?

Baran takes its name from haran, the aspidistra, whose cut leaves release antimicrobial phytoncides that helped preserve the sushi; plastic imitations took over in the 1960s as refrigeration spread.

The OED's earliest written mention of sushi in English comes from a book of which decade?

The 1893 book A Japanese Interior called it 'a roll of cold rice with fish, sea-weed, or some other flavoring'; Hepburn's dictionary had listed it even earlier, in 1873.

Since which year has the Kitashina shop made funazushi, Lake Biwa's fermented sushi?

Kitashina in Takashima, Shiga, has made funazushi since 1619; fish are salted for a year, then repacked annually in fermented rice for up to four more, and the roe is said to smell like cheese.

The Yōrō Code, which mentions sushi as a tribute item, dates from which year?

The Yōrō Code was compiled in 718 under Empress Genshō and lists sushi among tax goods; scholars think it meant narezushi, the fermented fish that preceded modern sushi by a millennium.

The word omakase literally means what?

Omakase means 'I'll leave it up to you', from the verb makaseru, 'to entrust'; a typical omakase runs 10 to 20 courses, starting light and building.

Yoshiaki Shiraishi opened the first conveyor-belt sushi restaurant in 1958 in which city?

Genroku Zushi opened in Fuse, now part of Higashi-Osaka, with a belt Shiraishi modelled on a brewery's bottle conveyor; kaiten-zushi became Japan's most casual and affordable sushi format.

Which food supplier did Norway's Bjørn Eirik Olsen finally persuade to sell salmon sushi in Japan?

Olsen's Project Japan struck a 1992 deal with Nichirei, selling 5,000 tonnes of Norwegian salmon at a discount on condition it was sold for sushi; Japan had eaten salmon only cooked until then.

Fermented rice-and-fish narezushi is thought to have originated in Southeast Asia, possibly in which river basin?

Preserving freshwater fish in salted rice is thought to have begun among rice-farming peoples of the Mekong basin; the Irrawaddy basin in today's Myanmar is another candidate.

Namanare, a 'partially fermented' sushi that shortened the old fermenting time, was invented in which period?

The Muromachi period ran from 1336 to 1573; the development of rice vinegar was key to the change.