Growing up, my understanding of sushi was basically centered around one experience. I was very young and my parents had brought me to a dinner with their friends. I remember trying the strange green discs, thinking the seaweed was chewy, and how odd it was to eat seaweed. It came from the sea. And it was much like eating grass.
While I lived in Tallahassee, I finally discovered my love for Sushi through the wonderful world of Jasmines. When I first started going there my freshman year with a few of my closest friends, the new restaurant spent special time and care making our Japanese bagels and Philadelphia rolls. They introduced me to edamame, the little green soy beans that squirt salty, soft goodness into your mouth, much like an Asian version of boiled peanuts.
But after a while, Jasmine kind of exploded with sorority girls and their masculine counterparts. The wait became excessive and my sushi intake became less and less. There were other great sushi spots around town, but most of them were too far away or far too expensive.
It wasn’t until I spent a summer in California and tried San Francisco sushi, though, that my world of raw food was finally unleashed. And it wasn’t just the sushi in California, I discovered upon moving there, but much of their cuisine was like a gift from heaven to my taste buds. Everything I ever ate in California was delicious. At one point my boyfriend even said, “I think you’d be hard pressed to find a bad meal in this town.”
One night, we wandered into this sushi restaurant near Berkeley, expecting the best. We sat down at the sushi bar, listened to the chefs speaking in Japanese and tried to read the Japanese symbols on the menu, best we could. We ordered a few things and were munching on some edamame when another couple sat down beside us.
It was pretty evident that these people were regulars. They knew the chefs and sat around making joke after joke while trays and trays of sushi were generously laid out before them. Then, the waitress brought out a little tray piled high with tiny little fish bones. I stared at the couple in freakish awe as they proceeded to stick skeleton after skeleton into their watering mouths and chew.
After I’d watched them go through a few good crunches, I asked the woman, “I’m sorry, what is that you’re eating?”
The woman looked at me, smiling patiently and knowingly. “Oh these are sardine bones. They pull them out of the sardines before they cook them and instead of throwing them away they fry them.” I stared in disbelief, although this was clearly an obvious description of what was happening.
“Have you ever tried them?” she asked us.
“No, oh my gosh,” I said. “Where is that on the menu?” It wasn’t. They were a gift from the chef. She offered both my boyfriend and I a fishbone, and we graciously accepted, pulling the little fishbones off of the plate. I stared at mine. Its little skeletor body and fin, so crispy and crunchy looking.
We stuck the fishbones in our mouths. They were good! I crunched on the thing, amazed at how similar it was to a potato chip, wondering if the little bones would cut my throat on the way down.
From there on out, there wasn’t a thing in the world I wouldn’t try! That’s not entirely true, but it did open my mind quite a bit. I started eating sashimi, little strips of raw fish, on a regular basis. I grew to love seaweed salad, the little green, slimy tangle of underwater weeds seasoned with sesame oil. I even tried octopus and eel.
When moving back to Jacksonville, one of the things I feared the most was the loss of good sushi. I hadn’t had a truly wonderful experience with sushi in Florida, so I was pretty certain the fun would end there, left in California.
Just last weekend, for the first time since I’d moved back home, I went out for sushi with some friends. One of whom was once a sushi chef. I ordered some interesting rolls and a bottle of hot sake, and of course, some edamame. I felt proud of my order. I had even ordered a few pieces of tuna sashimi. I was no sushi novice.
When the orders came, my friend was greeted with a delicious plate of raw fish… and nothing else. He was already showing me up, as he gently enjoyed his friends from the sea.
He had also ordered a salmon skin roll that had somehow ended up on my tray. He offered one to my boyfriend and I, and once again, I was back to being a novice. I cautiously stuck the roll in my mouth, concerned that fish skin might be wildly unpleasant. But, again to my surprise, I loved it.
My friend then ordered a bottle of chilled unfiltered sake. I had told him I didn’t like cold sake, but he told me to trust him. He poured my little sake shot worth of the cloudy drink and voila! I loved it.
To top off the night, my friend had ordered some salmon fish roe, aka little fish eggs, for dessert. I stared at the oversized roe, in complete disbelief that I would even go there, but he’d been right so many times before. So, I pinched a little roe in my chopsticks and popped it into my mouth, literally. A burst of salmonish gel coated my tongue. And although not my favorite, it was still good.
I couldn’t believe it. Back in Jacksonville where I had least expected it, my mind was still opening. I was still a novice, no matter how worldly I had felt before. But what’s important is not how much I knew about sushi, or how experienced I felt or seemed, but that I was willing to try. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that you can’t be afraid of new things. You never know a delicious fish bone until you try one.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
