Having soy sauce on the fish and not the rice doesn't matter in the least if the whole thing gets mashed up in your mouth. This is just pretentious BS.
I agree, but this guy sounds like he's spent a lot of time and effort perfecting his craft. I don't even like fish but I imagine I'd like this guys sushi.
It's crazy how defensive people get. The chef wasn't being imposing and clearly he was asked to explain what the 'standard' way of doing it is.
As popular as Japanese cuisine is getting, it's still not as widespread in the states as, say Mexican food. If there was a video of a Mexican chef advising that we generally don't eat tacos with knives and forks and he recommend a squeeze of lime on the fried fish, I'd like to believe that the comments aren't filed with people trying to call out pretentiousness lmao
He’s a Japanese sushi master demonstrating traditional sushi etiquette … it’s literally the point of the video. You’re free to eat sushi however you like, just as you’re free to pick up a steak with both hands and chow down at a restaurant. Ignoring etiquette is your choice; that doesn’t make an expert pretentious for explaining it.
I get it's traditional but also, sushi started in the 19th century Edo as street food. Some guy just handed you raw fish on a riceball and you shoved it in your mouth on your way to work.
BUT, if someone asked me "what do you think is the proper way to prepare and eat your burrito?" I would have a 10 hour dissertation on why you all eat burritos wrong.
Just because it's street food doesn't mean there isn't a traditional etiquette.
New Yorkers might find it odd if they see you handling pizza with forks and knives. Or when someone butter their bread with the steak knife. Like /u/TT10635 said, you're free to do as you wish
in most areas of life, people generally enjoy trying out advice from people who are more experienced than them and/or do something on a professional level.
Fair, but there are ways of eating food according to the culture, right?
Like, using knife and fork to eat pizza, especially from the inside out, would be regarded as a bit weird, right? Same with using cutlery to eat a burger, or putting mayo on top of the bun
Then there's eating hot dogs from the top down like a pscho rather than end to end, but its best we never meet those people
I've met people who like to cut up spaghetti too....
All this to say, if the pros at the source say its best eating things a certain way, they might have a point. Im gonna try it that way next time I have sushi
Where in the video did the chef say people are eating sushi wrong and insisting that they eat it a certain way?
Every time there is a video of food or drink on Reddit that is fancier than a McDonald's burger, brain dead contrarians come out of the woodwork with "well I don't care how they eat! I'm proud to be uncultured and will eat it how I want despite what you people tell me!" When no one is telling them they have to eat or drink something a certain way. No one is telling them they have to go to the bar that serves $30 cocktails or the restaurant serving $150 steaks.
We don't care what you do at home or at your local dive or whatever. You're not cool just because you have a pervasive and permanent victim complex causing you to think that people are up in arms cause you put ketchup on your steak or some shit. Just eat your food and shut up. Jesus Christ you victim complex people are fucking insufferable.
I mean, the ginger is there as a palette cleanser. Eating it with the sushi is rude, like you’re saying the sushi’s flavor is so bad you need ginger to mask it.
Like going to watch a play, except you pull out your phone midway through and scroll TikTok or something
I think this boils down to what is considered good manners in Japan though. Some cultures loudly slurp their food or belch after a meal as a show
of good manners and to compliment the host. However, If you bring your new partner home to meet your parents in most Western cultures and that mofo starts open mouth burping and smacking their lips loudly it ain’t gonna go down well!
If I had the pleasure of having dinner in a nice sushi restaurant with Japanese chefs and guests, respecting their etiquette is no more pretentious than not burping and open mouth chewing in the West.
I mean it matters if you are in a situation where etiquette and manners matter.
If someone came to America, went to a restaurant where the chef meticulously crafted a foodie style burger, and they pulled just the meat and toppings out piled a bunch of salt and pepper on the burger and then ate it with their hands in front of that chef lots of people would look at that and be like - what are they doing?
In your kitchen? Yeah eat it however you want. Put PB&J on the burger if you like it, whatever.
The person eating it should, because obviously there are ways of eating it that are more and less enjoyable. We want maximum enjoyment from our food.
Being pretentious about cooking and eating the food is some of the dumbest things ever.
It is not about being pretentious, it is about wanting to enjoy your food as much as possible. For many traditional meals, there are cultures who have spent centuries refining the experience to make it the best it can possibly be; it's worth listening to them.
Sorta, but when it comes to food I feel like cultural manners does stem from actual functional use.
Also since it's someone else who is making the meal for you and it's their entire career, it seems like it'd be a good idea to eat the food in the intended way as that was what they had in mind while prepping it.
Right…just enjoy your $200 sushi experience without the added judgement. Life is short, sure, tell me the customs but please don’t expect me to do that when I return to my home town and better still, don’t expect me to look down on the next person for eating it however they want to.
If the whole concept of adding ginger(and possibly wasabi) as a pallete cleanse, serving in another country and not seeing a single person use it in that way could be mildly infuriating. Pretentious isn't the right word here.
I just read a comment earlier about how someone's entire family gets the flu every Thanksgiving. Their most recent Thanksgiving, nobody got the flu because someone brought a +1 that could tell they were not properly defrosting the turkey. Thats when they found out it wasn't the flu, it was food poisoning.
Just because they enjoyed the turkey, doesnt mean they should be cooking and eating it like that.
Hey, if you're at a regular sushi restaurant, it's fine who cares, I also dip everything in soy sauce and wasabe lol. But if it's the kind in the video, you gotta respect the culture and etiquette.
Time and place. If I’m wolfing down a grocery store roll over my kitchen sink, I’m probably breaking all the etiquette rules and that’s between me and God.
If I’m eating at an authentic Japanese sushi restaurant, I’m going to follow the etiquette practices out of respect for the culture, and because Americans have a bad enough reputation as it is.
Some of it is practical. Using your fingers means less likely having it fall in the sauce. And dabbing only the fish part into the sauce avoids the rice part falling apart
True story or not, this is the way. Whilst customs, culture & etiquette are interesting, as long as you are enjoying YOUR food that YOU choose to eat, it does not really matter too much whether you do so according to some supposed customs, culture & etiquette of the food.
If you want to eat pizza with a knife & fork instead of folding it and holding in your hand, then go ahead. Want pineapple on it? Go ahead. Same with sushi and any other food.
I notice Japan is really good at this type of branding. I’ve seen this video a few times, and I hate how nervous the interviewer seems. This is just their version of fine dining, which I’ve never been a fan of.
"their version of fine dining" - yes, good analogy (or whatever the right word is). At the end of the day, food is food. Eat it to enjoy it and be sustained by it, not to be judged on the process which you go through in eating it.
Yes I completely agree there is no correct way to ear something. In fact a lot of the sushi rolls in america wouldn’t even exist if these rules were followed verbatim.
With that being said you do have to be careful if what you are doing is considered rude or if you are at somebody’s house such that you might insult them.
So if I went to this restaurant I would do my best to eat it like he says even if I have no intention of doing that again on my own.
The thing with the ginger as a palate cleanser and the way you apply the soy sauce is how the dish is intended to be eaten and how the flavors are balanced.
Sure you can soak the rolls until the soy sauce completely drips from the rice and eat the ginger with the fish. But that will be the same as if you were asking the chef to cook the fish through because you like it.
In western cooking you will be looked at like a barbarian if you order your steak well done and a bottle of ketchup to go along.... more so if it's wagyu
Sure eat it like that if you like, but you will be missing out on what is the intended and arguably the better taste.
There is a difference between “steak is not supposed to be overcooked” and “you have to hold the steak at a 27% angle while applying chimichuri sauce with your eyelashes. And don’t shake it while you move it your mouth cause you will anger the steak spirits”
Well makizushi is supposed to be eaten without the ginger and just a bit of shoyu not soaked. Same goes for the nigirizushi. And to achieve that there is a recommended technique.
Lay the nigiri on its side so that you can grab the fish and the rice at the same time allowing you to flip it over and dip just the fish into the soy sauce.
You dont shake, because A you are holding a damn piece of sticky rice that is barely stuck together not a brick. And B the amount of shoyu that will naturally cling to the fish is the right amount. Shaking some off reduces the amount of shoyu you have on your bite.
Btw nigiri is also commonly eaten simply with the fingers, giving you the same amount of control as the recommended technique has you hold the fish down with your index and middle finger while thumb and ring finger hold onto the rice lifting it.
And many of the other superstitions are not too different from western habits in how arbitray they are. You dont point with a knife, they dont pass food between chopsticks.
Westerners dont seat 13 at a table because it mimics the last supper, they dont put chopsticks upright into rice because it mimics the incense put out on graves.
The japanese might be still a bit more superstitious because many of these social "rules" helped with them getting along on their island with dense population and also shinto just happens to be a more spirit centric religion that is less strict in is also more open and less offended by any modern explanations for things, which is why it stuck around more easily in the modern age of scientific explanations.
Separately a couple of things I learnt about wasabi:
1. You are not supposed to drop it into soy sauce
2. The wasabi that you commonly get it is not real wasabi (real wasabi is exxy)
Worked at fine dining sushi spot. Best and easiest serving job ever. Probably $700 a night. Worked for 4 hours. The sushi chefs and all of the servers partied every night. Most polite people at work and we partied hard.
Part of the job was teaching people how to actually eat sushi. Speaking Japanese. Studying sake. And the home prep was more work than the job itself.
In most cases yes. However if you go to a fancy sushi place it's expected that you eat sushi in the 'correct' way. It's kind of like how 90% of the population of the US gets confused when you put more than one fork in front of them but if you go to an upscale restaurant the server is going to sneer at you if you use them wrong.
I just sneer at them back and we end up getting into a sneer-off, which I promptly end by swapping all the knives over to the fork side and vice versa while maintaining eye contact
I was watching this Japanese streamer and he was asked about slurping ramen and that if it meant respect to the chef. He was like, huh. We slurp because it helps with the heat. He apparently don't know any Japanese who does it as respect to the one who cooked it.
My understanding is that it’s the Chinese that slurp and burp. I lived in Singapore and at a Chinese family’s home slurping and burping was to show enjoyment of the food. However never saw that in public, or with Japanese. None of the other Asian countries I went to have I heard that was how they ate their food.
I would be interested to hear others opinion on this especially Japanese or Chinese.
I mean, every culture has pretentious cooks that dictate the way to eat food. There can be merits to certain things and I just think about them as subtle ways to make what youre eating "different" but when theyre presented as right/wrong I just groan.
It was stupid to leave, fine dining, BIG checks, very famous rich people (mostly assholes) and easy gig. I worked in film and couldn’t turn down an opportunity.
And the home prep was more work than the job itself.
I mean...that's the job, no?
Some cuisines spend a lot of time prepping garnish and sauces. Some takes a lot of time with marinades and aging. In your case, you spend a lot of time preparing yourself to be presentable to your customers, don't sell yourself short, this is all real effort and work.
The right way to eat any food people are snobs about (sushi, steak, pizza toppings, etc) is however you damn well please.
I will eat the finest steak with A1. People think that's wrong for some reason but I don't think steak sauce masks the taste of steak at all. I can still taste the full flavor of the steak, now it just tastes like that steak and steak sauce and I like steak sauce just as much as I like steak
To go to the pizza toppings thing, it's why I never liked shrimp on pizza. Eating pizza with shrimp as a topping just feels like you ate a piece of cheese pizza and popped a shrimp in your mouth. They don't complement, they don't clash, it just tastes like eating both at the same time. So since I'm paying by topping if I wanted that I'd just buy some shrimp at the store and eat it with a cheese pizza, same thing
Same. I mix the wasabi into the soy sauce, AND dip the ginger into it. I also eat the ginger last like a little treat rather than between pieces. I'm sure it's appalling for the chef to witness.
I also put wasabi into the soy sauce but also add my ginger to soak in it. Then I put a small piece of soaked ginger on every piece. I should probably commit seppuku.
Wasabi + soy sauce is totally valid, lots of Japanese people do that. My Father in law earned 2 Michelin stars in Japan and does it with take out/konbini sushi.
And the reason for this is because those places are serving you fish that sells for like $90 a pound. Putting ginger on it is masking the fish’s quality.
This is the equivalent of going to a high end restaurant and having all of the specific forks and spoons explained with their exact purposes. Like “it would be so silly to use your salad fork for the main dish.” However, when you go to the vast majority of restaurants a fork is a fork.
I’ve lived in Japan for over a decade and eaten a lot of sushi. Most of it has been at mid level “let’s do sushi for lunch / dinner,” not super high end dining, but no one cares how you eat it, and it’s far more common to see everyday Japanese customers using chopsticks and not their hands, even if it’s the “traditional” manner.
Wait, we're not supposed to mix wasabi into the soy sauce? AND we're not supposed to dip the ginger on it? It's like my mind just chooses to do all the wrong things.
Putting wasabi in the sauce is the correct way. I like to just glob it on like a heathen, and got told I was wrong often by my Japanese exwife. Lived there 9 years. But I still like it globbed on, especially if I’m eating some basic crap like shrimp or a cali roll, so fuck them rigid people who care lol.
Not to a regular line chef. Eat it how you want, this place he visits practice Omakase - "I'll leave it up to you" - So the concept literally is that you trust the chef to get the experience he knows you can have.
Sushi in itself does not have any rules as far as I know.
A lot of these videos show decorum that isn't even followed by most Japanese these days. Is it (older) proper etiquette? Yes. Do most follow it now? No.
I've eaten a PBJ a few times, but if you bring me to super-fancy PBJ restaurant where PBJs originated, I will slightly turn it to the side and dip only one specific portion in the sauce in the pre-destined amount so that I appear super cultural.
One thing that you might find interesting is that no-one in Japan gives an a fuck about what you do. The tips on how to use soy sauce just might you get better flavours.
I have known for years that you are supposed to pick up, dip in soy, eat, then eat the ginger. But I grew up adding the pickle ginger on top of the roll and eating it all in one gulp and it is delicious to me that way so I am not going to change.
This is basically the Japanese equivalent of those fancy restaurants with seventeen spoons and four cups and shit. In a normal day-to-day setting nobody actually cares how you eat sushi as long as you're not being a complete slob bout it.
The kind of restaurant experience in the OP is very much a tourist thing. And I'm not complaining about that, it's still a fun experience and there's a lot of history to sushi preparation and consumption that's really interesting to learn, but again if you're just going out to lunch nobody gives a shit how you dip your sushi.
Its all good. Eating the rolls in cone form is a littme more traditional according to the chef at the first sushi restaurant i ever ate at. That or poki bowls
I can’t wait to go out for sushi next time and scold anyone I sit with for putting soy sauce on the wrong way or committing an atrocity like mixing the ginger into the soy sauce, rather than having a small piece of it immediately following the roll. Peasants
There’s some movie or clip of a Japanese “guru” talking in great length about how to properly enjoy ramen. “Look at the noodles, see the fat in the soup like jewels, slowly slurp the noodles” all that crap. It turns out it’s just a joke, the teacher is being facetious. Just eat the food, it’s good. It’s not rocket science.
The chef's rules make sense if you're eating premium, artisanal sushi. But for regular everyday sushi, it’s just not the same level. If you're at a casual joint, there’s no sacred art to protect. For the rest of us, we should just eat our food however we actually enjoy it whether that means drowning it in soy sauce or topping it with a creamy onion sauce!
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u/bobafootfetish_ 10d ago
I've been eating sushi like a bloody Savage