table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Rot from the Head

Or, why I don’t eat local so-called ‘sushi’

(May 1, 2008)  Sushi and chilés — they were the weapons of our courtship; dinner was the battlefield where we challenged each other’s culinary valor and food the forge on which our relationship was tempered. I was already verging into the more intense flavors that would define “Pacific Rim” cuisine. She had the most highly developed sense of smell I’ve ever known. She was highly sensitive to capsicum; I hated raw fish. I was a master of vindaloo and fermented lemon pickle; she had a personal sake box at the legendary Hama in Venice.

Somehow it worked out. We became increasingly daring with each date, and have never looked back.

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There’s more to it, of course. I taught her to love cilantro, she introduced me to raw oysters. I learned to make gefilte fish, she discovered the secret to Cajun “blackened” spices. But in those early days, everything was a challenge.

For someone who’d never given much thought to the intricacy of Japanese cuisine, the ‘80s in Los Angeles were a heady time. Sure, there were the Hollywood joints where celebrities were inventing “California rolls,” creating the new fad — no one would have dreamed that in just a generation, kids would be asking for sushi instead of Kraft Dinner — but the real action was at a sprawling place near the beach, where a small army of Japanese chefs made wondrous dishes and joked profanely with their customers and nubile young Asian women poured endless bottles of warm sake (the regulars had wood boxes, personalized with marking pens, the rest of us used the regular thimble cups). No tipping of the cooks, of course, but you could buy your guy a bottle of beer. As the night wore on, the chefs became tipsy, and the offerings outrageous. “Here, try this!” (A rolled sea-urchin roe omelet.) “Now this!” (Shreds of raw lobster with bitter cress sprouts and aioli.)

Hama. The cutting edge of Los Angeles, in the last years of our pretending to be surviving the music biz. Giant clam tempura. Monkfish foie gras with ponzu sauce and frisée. Tea-smoked Kona amberjack sashimi. Tony Bourdain would have loved it, but he was only a year out of culinary school. Our last night there, the chef was deep-frying live giant prawns. One landed between us, looking like a space invader. “The eyes!” he commanded. “Eat the eyes first!” We obeyed. They tasted like deep-fried peppercorns.

So there was a time in my life when “sushi” represented excitement and adventure, going places new and dangerous, subjecting my palate to The Unknown.

Then there’s Humboldt County. I’ve tried, God knows, but the sushi is, and has nearly always been, pedestrian at best. “Pretty fresh” fish (or thawed Ahi) over sticky rice. And “vegetarian sushi”? Don’t get me started. One local chef says: “One thing you have to admit, selling a nickel’s worth of rice and a thin carrot stick and/or a cucumber wrapped in seaweed for 5-6 bucks seems like a profitable way to go … I was intrigued by a conversation I had with a Japanese kid (a college student) who was rolling sushi at Yadayada. He said that what Americans assume is traditional Japanese fare is not at all the same as what you’ll find in Japan — and not just the seafood part, the way the rolls are done.”

Right. Japanese sushi rice is more fermented, more sour, less sweet. Middle America has welcomed sushi into the mainstream by making it more like everything else: more sugar, less intense flavors, more ordinary. We corrupt everything we touch. We turn it into our own little Disneyland of “just slightly exotic” food. Sushi, once the most personal food experience (the vendor molded the ball in his hand, pressed the fish over it, and handed it to you), is now something supermarkets have in plastic compartments in refrigerated cases.

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