Raw Fish and Other Flavour

Below you will find a fairly comprehensive list of the dozens and dozens of various dishes you may find in a sushi bar in the U.S. -- as well as a few you probably won't find, but are interesting food for thought. Now, don't expect to find all of this stuff at once in any one place; but part of the excitement of going out to a sushi bar is the awesome variety of unique dishes that you could never provide at home. In this guide, I sometimes hyphenate dish-names in their first instance, as an aid to both pronounciation and web searching.

Since most U.S. sushi bars are also Japanese restaurants, you are likely to find a wide variety of other Japanese main dishes and cooked specialties available from the kitchen -- only a few of which can be mentioned herein. While enjoying some of these cooked appetizers along with your sushi is part of the fun, you are normally discouraged from ordering full cooked meals off the dinner menu when seated at the sushi bar. There are typically only about six to twelve stools at the sushi bar proper, and these are the domain of those who want to eat Sushi, a la Carte.

Raw Fish and Other Flavors
First of all, you don't have to eat raw fish to enjoy sushi and the sushi experience. Among the hundred choices available at a good sushi bar are numerous fish varieties that are served broiled, smoked, or slightly steamed or marinated. If you want to avoid raw fish altogether, just tell the sushi chef ahead of time.

There are vegetarian sushi aficionados who get along quite well with various pickle, egg, and vegetable rolls and side dishes. Check out my Vegetables section for an eye-popping list of non-fish dishes that everyone will find tasty! There is not any sushi I know of available in the U.S. that contains meat -- unless you count the SPAM sushi(!) for Hawaiians (does that have meat in it?). But there will be some meat side dishes available from the restaurant's kitchen. I know several regulars at my local sushi bar whose fare is limited to six or seven favorite dishes that don't include any raw fish. They adventurously enjoy the sushi world with a limited palate; they just like the place.

Is it Fishy? While just the idea of eating raw fish repulses some people, most raw sushi does not taste (or smell) 'fishy' at all. The fresh delicate flesh usually has a mild clean flavor and is often tender enough to 'melt in your mouth'. The few fishy-tasting exceptions include saba mackerel and sardines (or maybe some fish that's been around for way too long at a cheapo sushi bar!)

Still, many of the flavors of Japanese food are unusual to western tastes, especially soups, noodles, and stews served in a broth (dashi) based on fish flakes and kelp. There are also a few people who don't care for the flavor of the crisp nori seaweed that wraps almost all roll-type sushi (nori-maki), and a few other varieties (indicated below). A few sushi varieties come wrapped in just a small strip of seaweed. But many otherwise normal people really like the seaweed flavor and prefer their sushi wrapped in it.

The most palatable raw fish for first-timers are tuna and yellowtail. A tuna roll, with raw tuna in a roll of rice and seaweed, is all the raw fish some people will eat. Smoked salmon is really just lox, you've probably had that before; so next try raw salmon.

Many Westerners like fancy sushi rolls, where the fish is rolled up in rice and seaweed along with vegetables and various other flavors, then sliced in to several rounds. A 'California Roll' is the most common example. (The "various flavors" often include such non-traditional ingredients as mayonnaise, avocado, or cream cheese.) There are a lot of people in the West who only order such fancy sushi rolls, and a good number of American sushi bars seem to make their reputations by catering to this taste and by creating ever more unusual such fancy rolls. They may also be cheaper, because you don't really need very good fish if you're just going to wrap it up in all that other stuff. But to many people, (including many restaurant reviewers) fancy rolls are most of the sushi they eat, and it's as good a way as any to get introduced to the sushi experience.

Personally, I like to savor the individual taste and texture of the raw fish, so I seldom order fancy rolls, and you won't see a whole lot about them in this page. There are only one or two "fancy" rolls to be found in sushi bars in Japan, but yes, California Rolls have appeared as an exotic American import!

In Japan, there are also very few traditional spicy foods (that's right: no 'spicy tuna, scallop or hamachi' rolls!), but sushi chefs State-side tend to concoct "spicy" combinations to "enliven" the menu, including combinations using chile sauce, cream cheese, or mayonnaise. Please enjoy this stuff all you like, but I'll just stick to Japanese sushi.(randy johnson - ease)

See also : soto, sate