2009.06 美国寿司

shiyi18

American Sushi
U.S. chefs are bringing Japan’s trademark cuisine back to its roots.

By Trevor Corson
JUNE 2009 ISSUE
SHARE
Also see:


Video: "Roll Reversal"
Trevor Corson visits a diverse group of chefs who are adding new cultural inflections to traditional Japanese sushi making.
A QUIET REVIVAL of authentic Japanese sushi is under way in the U.S., and it contains the seeds of a revolution that could make eating sushi both more enjoyable and more ecologically sustainable. But this trend is easy to miss, because the new face of sushi isn’t always Japanese, or even Asian.

During the pleasant years I spent in Japan, friends would take me to neighborhood sushi joints. Most of the customers would sit around the counter, while the chef, a convivial character who knew many of his patrons, would suggest dishes based on the seasonal and local delicacies he had purchased that morning. After I returned to the U.S., I made a strange discovery: most American sushi diners sat at tables and ordered from menus, through waiters. Confused, I would seek out the sushi bar, but when I sat down, the Japanese chefs were initially standoffish, even dismissive. As soon as I explained—in Japanese—that I’d lived in Japan, they treated me differently.


Jeffrey Nitta helped me understand what I was experiencing. Nitta, a restaurant consultant in Los Angeles, has watched the sushi business since it took root in the U.S. in the 1970s. He and I quickly bonded over our nostalgia for the Japanese way of eating sushi. “The whole industry of sushi worries me,” Nitta told me. “There’s no more chefs getting to know customers.” Nitta’s explanation: “Most Japanese restaurant people think that Americans ultimately cannot appreciate the real deal.”

Instead of teaching us about the full range of sushi fish and shellfish, as well as the varied tastes and textures of the cuisine, most sushi chefs in the U.S. have neglected the Japanese style of eating and force-fed us simplistic menus that feature the least environmentally friendly—and least healthful—items: at the high end, bluefin tuna; at the low end, fatty belly cuts from lesser tuna; along with fatty industrial salmon, and factory-farmed shrimp and eel saturated in sugar. Until the latter half of the 20th century, none of these was considered suitable fare by connoisseurs of traditional sushi; none adheres to the Japanese practice of highlighting local, seasonal ingredients.

So imagine my delight when I walked into a sushi bar one evening and found not only a welcoming neighborhood atmosphere, but a chef who explained that he doesn’t serve bluefin tuna, because he doesn’t want it to go extinct. And imagine my surprise that this restaurant was in western Massachusetts, and that the chef was a rambunctious American whose ancestors had come not from Asia but from Europe.

At Fin Sushi in Lenox, Nick Macioge jokes with his diners and encourages them to get to know each other. Like a sushi bar in Japan, Fin is small and dominated by the counter. It’s not just the atmosphere. Macioge also tries to serve a more authentic meal. Instead of suggesting tuna, for example, he’ll talk his customers into sampling one of the most traditional sushi fish there is—saba, a mackerel that Macioge lightly marinates in salt and vinegar to bring the fish to the peak of flavor.

RECOMMENDED READING
An illustration of a man looking at framed pictures of a family
Dear Therapist: I Can’t Stand My Fiancée’s Ex-Husband
LORI GOTTLIEB
photo illustration of Iceland glaciers
The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record
PETER BRANNEN

SPONSOR CONTENT
How Dr. José Baselga Transformed Cancer Treatment
ASTRAZENECA
Macioge admits that it’s hard to persuade Americans to try the more traditional fish and shellfish, even though they’re more flavorful and generally less fatty. (These sea creatures also live lower on the food chain, they’re smaller, and they reproduce more quickly, which means they tend to contain less mercury and the catch is more sustainable.) But his approach has earned the food at Fin Sushi an exceptionally high Zagat rating—27 out of 30.

Macioge is one of a growing number of successful non-Asian sushi chefs. In 2005, Food & Wine magazine chose as one of its Best New Chefs a Caucasian sushi chef in Texas named Tyson Cole. A few months later, a San Diego chef named Jerry Warner was picked as California’s Sushi Master. Two years ago, one of the most high-profile Japanese restaurants in America, Morimoto, in New York City—operated by Masaharu Morimoto, an “Iron Chef” of Food Network fame—chose as its head sushi chef a young Caucasian named Robby Cook. And this year, one of the most talked-about sushi bars in San Francisco has been Sebo, run by chefs Daniel Dunham and Michael Black. (Black is half-Japanese and spent the first seven years of his life in Japan.) These chefs offer sushi fish so traditional that most Americans have never heard of them—which is why Dunham and Black chat across the fish case with customers about what they’re serving, just like the chefs I remember in Japan.

Exactly because these new chefs are rooted in American culture and society, they are well equipped to offer an experience that is, in important ways, authentically Japanese. Consider the case of Marisa Baggett, an African American chef based in Memphis. She told me her goal is to teach Americans in Tennessee and Mississippi to appreciate authentic sushi, but she approaches the task through the local idiom. She educates her customers about traditional sushi etiquette, using clever comparisons to southern manners. And she creates sushi with local ingredients such as smoked duck and pickled okra. This is a fair interpretation of authenticity—in Japanese, the word sushi can refer to just about any dish that includes rice seasoned with vinegar, sugar, and salt. Chefs like Baggett put the lie to claims by Japanese sushi-industry lobbyists that eating endangered bluefin tuna is essential to Japanese culture. Indeed, in Portland, Oregon, the head sushi chef at Bamboo Sushi, a Caucasian named Brandon Hill, has just had his menu certified by conservation groups.

Happily for American devotees of authentic sushi, this peculiar new breed of home-grown sushi chefs seems poised to assume the mantle of the cuisine. But I would love to see a new generation of chefs from my home away from home—Japan—try to prove me wrong.

Trevor Corson is author of the worldwide pop-science bestseller The Secret Life of Lobsters and the highly acclaimed The Story of Sushi. His website is TrevorCorson.com.



美国寿司
美国厨师正在将日本的标志性美食带回其根源。

作者：特雷弗-科森
2009年6月号



视频。"反转卷"
特雷弗-科森访问了一群不同的厨师，他们正在为传统的日本寿司制作加入新的文化元素。
在美国，一场对正宗日本寿司的平静复兴正在进行，它包含了一场革命的种子，可以使吃寿司变得更有乐趣，更具有生态可持续性。但这一趋势很容易被忽视，因为寿司的新面孔并不总是日本人，甚至也不是亚洲人。

在我在日本度过的愉快时光里，朋友们会带我去附近的寿司店。大多数顾客都会围坐在柜台前，而厨师是一个和蔼可亲的人物，他认识许多顾客，会根据他那天早上购买的季节性和当地的美味来推荐菜肴。我回到美国后，有了一个奇怪的发现：大多数美国人都坐在桌子上，通过服务员按菜单点菜。我很困惑，就去找寿司吧，但当我坐下来时，日本厨师们起初很冷淡，甚至不屑一顾。一旦我用日语解释说我曾在日本生活过，他们就会对我另眼相看。


杰弗里-尼塔帮助我理解了我所经历的一切。尼塔是洛杉矶的一名餐厅顾问，自从20世纪70年代寿司在美国扎根以来，他一直关注着寿司业。他和我很快就因为对日本人吃寿司的方式的怀念而联系在一起。"新田告诉我，"整个寿司行业让我感到担忧。"没有更多的厨师去了解顾客了。" Nitta的解释。"大多数日本餐馆的人认为，美国人最终无法欣赏真正的交易"。

美国的大多数寿司厨师没有向我们传授寿司鱼和贝类的全部种类，以及美食的不同口味和质地，而是忽视了日本的饮食风格，强行向我们提供简单的菜单，其中包括最不环保和最不健康的项目：高端的蓝鳍金枪鱼；低端的小金枪鱼的肥腹；以及肥美的工业鲑鱼和工厂化养殖的虾和糖饱和的鳗鱼。直到20世纪后半叶，这些东西都不被传统寿司的鉴赏家认为是合适的食物；都没有坚持日本的做法，突出当地的季节性食材。

因此，当我某天晚上走进一家寿司店，发现这里不仅有温馨的邻里氛围，而且有一位厨师解释说他不提供蓝鳍金枪鱼，因为他不希望蓝鳍金枪鱼灭绝，可以想象我的喜悦。想象一下我的惊讶吧，这家餐厅在马萨诸塞州西部，而且厨师是一个粗犷的美国人，他的祖先不是来自亚洲而是来自欧洲。

在莱诺克斯的芬氏寿司，尼克-马奇奥格与他的食客开玩笑，鼓励他们互相认识。像日本的寿司店一样，Fin很小，由柜台主导。这不仅仅是气氛的问题。Macioge还试图提供更真实的膳食。例如，他不会推荐金枪鱼，而是说服顾客品尝最传统的寿司鱼之一--鲭鱼，Macioge用盐和醋轻轻腌制，使鱼的味道达到顶峰。

推荐阅读
一幅插图：一个男人在看裱好的家庭照片
亲爱的治疗师。我无法忍受我未婚妻的前夫
LORI GOTTLIEB
冰岛冰川的照片插图
潜伏在地球古老岩石记录中的可怕警告
PETER BRANNEN

赞助内容
何塞-巴塞尔加博士如何转变癌症治疗方式
ASTRAZENECA
Macioge承认，很难说服美国人尝试更传统的鱼类和贝类，尽管它们的味道更鲜美，而且一般来说脂肪更少。（这些海洋生物也生活在食物链的低端，它们更小，而且繁殖更快，这意味着它们往往含有更少的汞，捕捞也更具有可持续性）。但他的方法为Fin Sushi的食物赢得了特别高的Zagat评级--27分（满分30分）。

Macioge是越来越多的成功的非亚洲寿司厨师中的一员。2005年，《美食与美酒》杂志将德克萨斯州一位名叫泰森-科尔的白种人寿司厨师选为其最佳新厨师之一。几个月后，一位名叫杰里-华纳的圣地亚哥厨师被选为加州的寿司大师。两年前，美国最引人注目的日本餐厅之一，纽约市的森本(Morimoto)--由美食网著名的 "铁匠 "森本正治经营--选择了一位名叫罗比-库克的年轻白人作为其寿司主厨。今年，旧金山最受关注的寿司店之一是由厨师丹尼尔-德纳姆和迈克尔-布莱克经营的塞博。(布莱克有一半的日本血统，他生命中的前七年是在日本度过的）。这些厨师提供的寿司鱼非常传统，以至于大多数美国人都没有听说过它们--这就是为什么德纳姆和布莱克在鱼柜对面与顾客聊天，谈论他们所提供的东西，就像我在日本印象中的那些厨师一样。

正因为这些新厨师扎根于美国文化和社会，他们才有能力提供一种在重要方面是真实的日本经验。考虑一下玛丽莎-巴盖特的情况，她是一位在孟菲斯的非裔美国厨师。她告诉我，她的目标是教田纳西州和密西西比州的美国人欣赏正宗的寿司，但她通过当地的习惯用语来完成这项任务。她向顾客介绍了传统的寿司礼仪，巧妙地将其与南方的礼仪相比较。她用熏鸭和腌秋葵等当地食材制作寿司。这是对真实性的公平解释--在日语中，寿司一词几乎可以指任何包括用醋、糖和盐调味的米饭的菜肴。像巴盖特这样的厨师，对日本寿司业说客声称吃濒临灭绝的蓝鳍金枪鱼对日本文化至关重要的说法进行了驳斥。事实上，在俄勒冈州的波特兰市，竹寿司的主厨，一个名叫布兰登-希尔的白人，刚刚让他的菜单得到了保护组织的认证。

对美国正宗寿司的信徒来说，令人高兴的是，这批奇特的本土寿司厨师似乎已经准备好承担美食的衣钵。但我很想看到来自我的家乡--日本的新一代厨师试图证明我是错的。

特雷弗-科森是全球流行科学畅销书《龙虾的秘密生活》和备受好评的《寿司的故事》的作者。他的网站是TrevorCorson.com。