Raw Fish Delicacy : Americans Belly Up to the Sushi Bar

When wholesaler Kuni Kawakami began selling fish in 1970, only one of his customers served sushi, the Japanese raw fish delicacy.

Kawakami delivered 20 pounds of tuna, shrimp and yellowtail each morning to the tiny sushi bar in Gardena. There, the sushi chef, who had spent a score of years perfecting his art, delicately sliced the fish into thin pieces that would grace cork-sized cakes of lightly vinegared and sweetened rice.

Today, International Marine Inc. sells more than 24,000 pounds of fish each week to more than 400 sushi bars throughout the United States, flying it to such cities as Denver, Chicago and Houston.

Sushi is fast becoming as American as hot dogs and apple pie in Los Angeles, where more than 20 tons of raw fish are consumed each week.

An estimated 700 sushi bars have sprung up across the Southland, ranging from the quiet traditional Horikawa in Little Tokyo to the bustling no-frills New Meiji fast-food outlet in Glendale.

Darling of Gourmets

And sushi, like the Mexican and pasta food trends before it, is now the darling of do-it-yourself gourmets. Classes on how to make sushi are sold out. Department stores report brisk sales of $40 sushi-making kits, $100 sushi knives, lacquered serving trays and books. Even the soy sauce, rice and sake business has picked up, manufacturers say, because so much is consumed at sushi bars.

President Reagan tried sushi on a trip to Japan and pronounced it “good.” And thousands of other diners, most of them the young urban professionals on both coasts, have fallen victim to what buffs call “sushi rapture”--the feeling of well-being brought on not only by the gracefully prepared cuisine but the ambiance of the sushi bar itself.

The bars, usually separated from the main dining rooms where hot meals are served, take on an exotic mystique. Sushi lovers sometimes run up bills as high as $100 as they sit for hours at highly polished wood counters in the intimate bars, not only eating but looking at the thinly sliced and artfully arranged sashimi (thinly sliced raw fish), makizushi (rice, fish and vegetables rolled in sheets of seaweed) and the nigirizushi (thin slices of fish placed atop small cakes of rice).

But it is not only the flavor and beauty of colorful arrangements of bite-sized morsels that keep sushi devotees coming back for more. At the center of all is the shokunin, the sushi chef, who is paid as much as $30,000 a year and whose artistic skills are steeped in the samurai tradition of self-discipline and honor. There are so many new restaurants that there is a shortage of the well-trained chefs, most of whom must wait their turn on immigration lists.

“The skill and conversation of the chef is one of the most interesting things about going to eat sushi,” says Chieko Webb of Claremont. “You can tell immediately if a chef is well-trained. And his personality is very important because you are with him all evening. We don’t go back if the chef lacks skill, is uncultured or loud.”

Chieko Webb and her husband John, a high school English teacher, eat sushi whenever they can afford the $30 to $60 tabs. She usually orders toro, the opaque pink flesh of the tuna’s belly. The most popular fish at sushi bars, toro is so rich and tender that it resembles butter. Her husband’s favorite is uni-- tiny mustard-colored sea urchin roe that has a nut-like flavor. Many sushi fans believe it to be the perfect health food, noting that the fish, rice, vegetables and seaweed are high in protein and vitamins and low in calories. A typical sushi meal (seven to nine pieces) has about 300 calories.

“It’s easy to see why Americans have become attracted to sushi,” said Mia Detrick, a Mill Valley boutique owner. “After years of junk food and heavy meat and potatoes fare, finally here is something that is wonderfully fresh, clean and pure.”

Resistance to Raw Fish

Despite such enthusiasm, there is still a general resistance on the part of many Americans to raw fish, fanned by reports of potential health problems associated with eating it.

Actor Sylvester Stallone, playing a cab driver in the recent movie “Rhinestone,” put it bluntly when three tourists asked to be taken to a sushi bar.

“Confidentially, between you and me, it would be like walking across a field and chewing on a cow, if you know what I mean,” Stallone said with a grimace.

But even the most die-hard sushi devotees admit that they had to be coerced into taking that first bite. Detrick recalls her first sushi experience in 1981. “I was at the Bonaventure Hotel and some friends I was with wanted to go into the sushi bar. I saw all those raw octopus legs and wanted to cover my eyes.”

Since then she has eaten in more than 50 sushi bars along the West Coast and became so enamored of the topic that she wrote a book about it.

Roy Yamaguchi, owner of the 385 North restaurant in Los Angeles, says that after a long day of sampling his own California French dishes and sauces, he finds that the simplicity of sushi is the perfect change of pace.

Fears of becoming ill from eating sushi are mostly unfounded, medical experts say. In Japan, stomach problems brought on by the anisakis worm is common. But the variety found in the fish imported to the United States causes only rare and trivial infections, according to Dr. Robert Fontaine, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Ernie Doizaki, owner of Los Angeles Fish Co., notes that while the per-capita consumption of seafood nationally is now 13 pounds a year, in Southern California it is almost double that--25 pounds--and much of that is sushi.

The sushi served in local restaurants is obtained from the dozens of fish wholesalers scattered throughout the Southland.

The most important part of a sushi chef’s day are the pre-dawn hours he spends walking through these warehouses carefully choosing from the tons of fish--scallops, tuna, snapper, Spanish mackerel, salmon, abalone--that arrive daily from local and foreign waters.

Some of the popular fish, such as Japanese yellowtail, octopus and shrimp, is frozen but so popular with customers that sushi chefs use it anyway.

California Roll

Menu choices at the American sushi bars reflect the less adventuresome Western palates. One of the most popular items is a local invention--the California roll, a concoction of avocado, cooked crab meat, mayonnaise rolled in rice and seaweed.

Most novices prefer the milder-flavored cooked prawn and crab, eel and tuna, chefs say. Experienced sushi diners prefer the more exotic sushi-- tobiko (bright orange flying fish roe topped with the bright yellow yolk of a quail egg), raw prawns, squid and the strong-flavored kohada (Japanese shad).

The popularity of sushi bars has brought with it innovations that alarm some purists. Sushi rice, which for hundreds of years was painstakingly prepared by the chef and hand-cooled by the apprentices, is now usually made in automatic rice cookers.

High-volume businesses also have introduced machines that can produce 4,000 rice balls an hour, compared to a sushi chef’s 3,000 morsels a day. And some outlets have replaced the traditional hardwood or marble counters with conveyor belts that quickly and economically whisk sushi to large crowds. What seems to be the ultimate Americanization of the business--fast-food outlets--has been successfully pioneered by Los Angeles-based New Meiji Franchise Corp. Hirohisa Yamada, realizing the marketing possibilities of low-cost sushi, started with six franchises in 1980, and has already added another 24 outlets.

Fast-Food Sushi

While an average meal at a sushi bar can run anywhere from $15 to $30, the fast-food sushi is about half that price. Two pieces of tuna, which cost about $2 to $3 in a sushi bar, sell for $1.55 at the take-out shops.

New Meiji can sell sushi this inexpensively by buying in bulk and cutting down on the number of sushi chefs. At a central kitchen in Gardena, two sushi chefs, aided by kitchen helpers, slice the fish and prepare the rice that is delivered to the outlets. At the take-out shops the sushi is assembled as it is ordered.

Dexterous sushi lovers can save even more money by making the delicacy themselves, and many are doing it. Bill Lane, gourmet food buyer for Bloomingdale’s in New York City, said that the sushi demonstration was the most successful of the Christmas promotions at the store. “Sushi kits were the trendy Christmas gift this season, and they are still selling very very well.”

Robin Baltic, a Silver Lake events consultant, spent a recent Saturday with 20 others learning how to make sushi at Los Angeles City College.

Holding up sticky rice-flecked hands and looking amusedly at the less than perfect tuna roll she had just created, she said: “This is why it’s better to buy it at a restaurant.”

‘Western Arrogance’

She added: “Isn’t this the ultimate in Western arrogance, thinking we can learn in a day what has taken hundreds of years to perfect?”

Sushi had its origin more than 1,300 years ago when cleaned raw fish was pressed between layers of salt and rice and weighed down with a stone to preserve it for months at a time. It wasn’t until 1824 that the raw seafood was served on small clumps of vinegared rice.

On a recent afternoon, Shigemi Tsushima, one of three sushi chefs at the Thousand Cranes Restaurant in the New Otani Hotel in Little Tokyo, was mesmerizing Bill Hobbs, a Hacienda Heights salesman, and Tony Ugalde of Montclair with his quickness and grace.

Tsushima is 36 years old. And he has spent more than 21 years perfecting those quick, elegant movements. He began his apprenticeship in a Tokyo sushi shop, where for the first four years he washed dishes, delivered orders, waited tables and cleaned the fish and rice. It took another two years to learn how to prepare sushi rice properly, Tsushima explained.

‘Soul’ of the Chef

It was only after six years that Tsushima was allowed to pick up a knife, often called the “soul” of the sushi chef. Even today Tsushimi carries his knives, some of which cost $200, to and from work in a small black leather bag.

Understanding the nuances of dozens of types of fish takes years, he said. From the rich oily mackerel to the crunchy geoduck, they all have their own special characteristics and serving problems. A sushi chef also learns to make artistic cutouts of aspidistra, a green leaf used to decorate sushi trays.

But it is tamago, pieces of custard-like omelet that is considered the ultimate test of a sushi chef’s skill. Americans don’t often order tamago, but in Japan it is usually the first item to be ordered. If it is bad, the diner can leave without paying.

Diners often stress that the friendship that develops between customer and chef is one of the most enchanting parts of the experience, and the sushi chef often finds himself in the role of psychologist and Emily Post.

“Getting to know the customers is very nice. And getting a lot of information about confidential matters of business and the heart, that is the very interesting part of my job,” Tsushima said.

Manners Part of Ambiance

Manners play an important part in the ambiance of a sushi bar. There are usually no menus in the bar, and most diners learn to order in Japanese. Experienced diners usually let the chef do the choosing, because he gives the best he has to offer, and because he seems to know by instinct just how exotic a fare a diner can eat.

The ultimate thrill, some sushi fanatics believe, is eating the puffer, whose ovaries and liver contain the deadly poison tetrodotoxin, which attacks the nerves and paralyzes the diner’s muscles. The federal Food and Drug Administration, however, forbids importation of this delicacy called fugu.

In Japan, specially licensed and trained chefs treat the fish to remove the poison. A plate of fugu can cost as much as $200. Mitsugoro Bando, a famous Kabuki actor who had been designated by the government as a “living national treasure,” died in 1975 after eating fugu liver in a Kyoto restaurant. Every year about 100 Japanese die of fugu poisoning.