Those that know me know I love sushi.
Sushi is a fascinating food. The concept of sushi is such a complex one built on top of a food that is so simple. It is about beauty, precision, and extracting flavors out a few ingredients that have been treated with love and respect towards the best ingredients.
And this is why I'm so disappointed with much of how we do things in America.
(To be fair, I've never lived in Japan, so I can't tell you what's wrong with Japan).
Proper sushi takes time to learn. It requires dedication to perfection. Merely getting the job done isn't good enough, and yet I've seen it happen in so many sushi restaurants that it becomes more difficult to be polite:
"Oh, you want to go there?"
*apprehensive look*
"This other place is better."
*apprehensive look*
"Mmmmmmmmokay. I guess so."
It has nothing to do with snobbery. It's about standards. It's about respect. It's about love for the craft.
It can take years to learn how to make proper sushi rice. Celebrity chef Ming Tsai spent a year in Japan just learning sushi rice (su-meshi). It's about the proper texture; the right stickiness; the right balance of vinegar to sugar to salt in the seasoning; the right way to cool the rice; the best way to keep the rice at serving temperature. And this is just about the rice, mind you; I haven't even touched on the skill it takes to make maki (rolls) or nigiri, or the skills and knowledge required to properly prep the individual ingredients. How do you prepare octopus? How do you cook the eggs? How do you season the fish? How can you tell the quality of the fish simply by looking, smelling, and touching?
All of these things go into making sushi. The lower the skill, the lesser the knowledge, the lesser the quality of ingredients, and the sushi becomes less.
I recently visited a Mikuni here in Sacramento. I hadn't been to a Mikuni in years. When I was younger I used to love the restaurant because of all the crazy rolls, the quality of the fish (they do use quality fish), the mix of ingredients, and those sushi boats... oh, those sushi boats. Those huge platforms of sushi, lined up in mouth-watering rows like those poor, poor rowmen in the days of old.
But during my recent visit all I saw was poor, poor execution.
Quality ingredients are just a part of good sushi. The other parts are good preparation and good execution. So while their fish is good, the execution, at least from the chef we were seated before, was sloppy. I'll admit, he knew how to slice fish. Roll construction, however, was subpar. Layering ingredients over the top must look good before you shape. Slicing rolls haphazardly, resulting in different sizes, is not beautiful. Loads and loads of creamed avocado underneath slices of salmon is a waste and appears gluttonous. And, though most likely not his fault, the rice was average. Very average.
When I asked where he'd learned sushi, he said that after spending a year as a dishwasher he was asked if he wanted to learn sushi. He spent some time learning prep and then was thrown on the line.
In America, at least, getting "thrown in the fire" to force cooks to learn fast is how things are done. From what I've experienced, seen, and read, it's that way in most restaurants where they use the "French hierarchy system", though there are always exceptions. It's understandable. It's a long-standing practice. The restaurant business is very high cost/low returns so restaurateurs rely on volume of sales to turn a profit. There is just no time to waste time on taking time. I experienced this first hand during my short-lived time as a line cook. It's a demanding job. And yet the best of them turn out tasty, well-crafted food. The system does work.
I've experienced learning sushi basics in a very good restaurant run in this very manner; it was fast and hard. It was my lack of experience and probably an internal perspective on food I may have not let surface that made it difficult to pick up learning as quickly as I wanted. I felt out of place. I didn't feel right. I wanted to be as good as the chef, but I just wasn't fast enough.
When I saw Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, I saw something different. The kitchen during prep was not chaotic. It was not hurried. It was calm but still had a sense of intent and purpose. Everyone was doing a job and was set on doing their job correctly. There are stages of learning and the next stage isn't begun until the previous stage is complete. The focus is on the skill and the perfection of skill rather than the expedience of learning - not to say that these cooks are slow to learn. There is an obvious work ethic. These cooks - at least the ones that stay and commit - train intensely for 10 years before they move on.
While I can't tell you where, for example, the cooks at Akebono on Freeport Blvd. here in Sacramento trained, it's obvious that the restaurant as a whole has a standard. A high standard. There are knowledgeable people making your sushi. When you look at their sushi, it is well-crafted. It is simple, appetizing, and made with care. There is craftsmanship behind the sushi bar. And they're still doing it quickly, getting plates of food out as fast as they can to western diners, all without sacrificing quality. This is the opposite of what I experienced at Mikuni.
I'm not suggesting that American kitchens run their establishments differently. The standard system works, but it works in context; in a high cost/low return business, volume is necessary, and with high volume comes the need for speed. I get that. And there's plenty of good, well-crafted food that gets delivered under this system.
But not everything needs to be like that. It's about context. There's a difference between slamming product out like a machine and taking the time to properly study the craft in order to hone the skills. These are examples of two different approaches to any single subject. And it's not just in food. In much of our everyday life we see the former but not the latter.
Customers want their stuff now, now, now. They want to pay less for something despite the fact that a lower price might mean lower quality. Convenience takes precedence over craftsmanship. It's quantity over quality.
Our lives are fast-paced. General standards are low. How often do we accept horribly constructed music, badly crafted film, sloppy hamburgers, cheaply made products... all because that's what is available or because the price is low? Or both?
Sushi is simple, yet so much work goes into proper preparation and execution. It's about love of the parts and assembling the whole with the same kind of love. It takes knowledge, dedication, precision, and time. It cannot be mastered in mere months. You might be able to assemble a roll, but is it perfect? Or is it sloppy? Is it appetizing? Or will it suffice because it's done? How many things in your life suffice just because it's done, whether by you or someone else?
Sushi done properly is better. It doesn't just look better. It feels better. It tastes better. It's a better experience. Why anyone would deface such a food with shoddy craftsmanship is astonishing to me, even though, on a rational level, I know that the real motivation behind slam-bam-here's-your-sushi is money.
And that saddens me. It saddens me that the chefs who make such sushi don't demand more of their customers, that they don't care more about what their customers are experiencing. It's a shame that customers don't demand more of their food, more of their chefs.
It's a shame that this line of acceptance is prevalent in so many other areas of life. On the whole, we don't demand higher standards; we're too eager to accept what we're being given. And what it comes down to isn't necessarily a matter of taste; I appreciate low-brow comedy, grungy garage rock, and fast food (yes I do). But there's a difference between a low-brow comedy that was thrown together and badly acted and one that was well-crafted and well played. There's a difference between musicians that can't play their instruments and musicians that play well and hard but choose simplicity. There's a difference between a crappy hamburger patty slapped in between two buns and a burger that was carefully constructed yet done so in under a minute.
It isn't just consumers, either. Think about our current television culture. M*A*S*H didn't do very well at the start but started to pick up popularity in reruns. Seinfeld do didn't well in the beginning, either, but had a good time slot and was allowed to develop. M*A*S*H went on to be one of TV's greatest shows. Seinfeld is now a seminal part of modern American pop culture and is a large contributor to our lexicon. Both shows were given a chance despite slow beginnings. They were given a chance to develop and find an audience. Both had runs that lasted many years.
Today - and for the past, what, ten years - if it isn't an instant success, a television show has a much lower chance of staying on the air, no matter how good it is. Recent examples from the last 10 years or so: Wonderfalls, Firefly, Go On... all shows that were well-received, either critically or by their audiences (big or small) at the time, but then cancelled either mid-season or after one season. They weren't allowed to develop or grow an audience save for a single season or less.
Then there's the case of The Tonight Show With Conan O-Brien, where Conan was let go before he completed a full season. There was a ratings drop after he took over for Jay Leno. To make a long story short, NBC gave The Tonight Show back to Leno and released Conan from his contract. Nevermind that Conan O'Brien was a completely different type of host than Leno, catered to a much different audience, and therefore needed time to grow into the new role and build his audience, something he wasn't allowed to do.
Times have changed. Results are expected to come faster. Patience is a rare commodity in both consumerism and business. Companies try to schedule releases of products to beat other, similar products released by other companies. Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's XBox are examples of this. Both companies know that, with consumer impatience, the first to be released will have a greater chance of being adopted early. While early Playstation 3 machines did have a few bugs, as is normal with first releases, the XBox 360 machines were riddled with way more problems.
The thing is, time, craft, and context is lost on much of America. Few people want to take the time to learn anything or to wait for anything. We want more and more and want it faster and faster. A fast accomplishment is seen as a positive trait in business but patient, methodical action with fantastic results is just seen as too slow. Multitasking is the order of the day whereas focusing on the task at hand is seen as negative because you're neglecting something else.
Context plays a huge part in this. It is certainly possible to accomplish something relatively quickly with great results. But does quick need to be applied to everything? There are some things that need more time than others. Sometimes more emphasis should be put on learning skills and technique rather than the speed at which something can be done. It's about context: What are the goals? What are you trying to do?
Are you trying to put out crappy sushi? Because if so, your goal should be to breeze through learning basic knife skills, haphazardly apply them to your ingredients, and quickly stick the food on a plate. In that context, you will certainly accomplish your goals.
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