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kottke.org posts about sushi

Time Lapse of the Sushi Scene in Isle of Dogs

My favorite scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs is the sushi-making scene. It’s a pure showcase of stop motion animation goodness and wordless storytelling.

Andy Biddle has posted a behind-the-scenes time lapse video of him and Anthony Farquhar-Smith animating that scene:

From the costume changes, it looks like that 40 seconds of video took about 29 days to complete, although obviously not full days in many cases.

You can see more of Biddle’s work here and Farquhar-Smith’s work here.

Update: Somehow I totally missed the days counter in the upper left corner of the video…the sequence took 32 days to do. (This is like the awareness test with the moonwalking bear.) (thx, all)

Update: Isle of Dogs’ head puppet master explains a bit more about what goes into making these stop motion scenes.


Using weeds, pests, and invasive species to make sustainable sushi

At Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, CT, chef owner Bun Lai makes sustainable sushi using invasive species and other typically overlooked ingredients.

By collecting invasive seafood on shell-fishing beds, we are basically providing a free weeding service… We hope that this will do a few things. First of all, it could potentially curb the dominance of invasive species in the ecosystem. Secondly, it would provide the seafood industry a greater supply of native seafood and reduce the stresses on those populations already fished. Finally, we hope that it would encourage greater balance in the inter-regenerative relationship between man and the oceans. If we were to have thirty Miya’s in thirty different places, each one would have a slightly different menu, each reflecting the problems of its local universe.

Take a look at the current menu…there are entire sections dedicated to dishes made from invasive species (like Kentucky silver carp, Japanese knotweed, and Florida lionfish) and sustainable seafood.


The world’s smallest sushi is made from a single grain of rice

Tiny Sushi

At Sushiya no Nohachi in Tokyo, you can eat sushi that is made using a single grain of rice. The tiny sushi came about when a customer challenged the owner’s son to make the smallest possible sushi.

The most difficult tiny sushi are the ones with nori seaweed โ€” those are the sea urchin and egg. For sea urchin, he has to put a small piece of nori around a grain of rice horizontally. For egg, he has to wrap the nori around the egg and grain of rice. It’s pretty impressive to witness.

You can see the small sushi being made in this video:

That said, when we asked how often they need to make a plate of small sushi, we were surprised.

“Just a few times a week and at most five times in a day.” Though when customers from overseas order, they tend to be extra enthusiastic about the tiny sushi.

He told us that one woman from Europe burst into tears and cried for an hour and a half after seeing the cute, little sushi.

(thx, jason)


The physics of sushi

Master sushi chefs in Japan spend years honing their skills in making rice, selecting and slicing fish, and other techniques. Expert chefs even form the sushi pieces in a different way than a novice does, resulting in a cohesive bite that doesn’t feel all mushed together. In this short video clip from a longer Japanology episode on sushi, they put pieces of sushi prepared by a novice and a master through a series of tests โ€” a wind tunnel, a pressure test, and an MRI scan โ€” to see just how different their techniques are. It sounds ridiculous and goofy (and it is!) but the results are actually interesting.


How to eat sushi

I wasn’t expecting too much of this video about how to eat sushi, but it’s actually pretty good. It features Naomichi Yasuda of the highly regard Sushi Yasuda in Manhattan making sushi for a newbie and telling him how it should be eaten.

This Old House + Jiro Dreams of Sushi = this video.

Update: Another perspective on how sushi should be eaten comes from Tom Downey, who shares the 10 commandments of the owner of Tokyo’s Yajima Sushi.

There were open spots at the counter. But the chef, Susumu Yajima, instructed me to take a seat nearby and wait. Eventually I was summoned to a place directly in front of him, and the attack began: Piece after piece in rapid succession, as Yajima barked orders at me.

“Eat now!” he said, milliseconds after passing me a glistening slice of buri (amberjack) atop shari (the finger of rice that forms the base of nigiri sushi). “Use your hand!” he upbraided me, as I reached for my chopsticks. He even instructed me to half-chew one piece before washing it down with sake.


Kim Jong-il’s sushi chef

Kenji Fujimoto spent more than a decade as Kim Jong-il’s personal chef and his children’s nanny. This is his amazing story.

At a lavish Wonsan guesthouse, Fujimoto prepared sushi for a group of executives who would be arriving on a yacht. Executive is Fujimoto’s euphemism for generals, party officials, or high-level bureaucrats. In other words, Kim Jong-il’s personal entourage. Andguesthouse is code for a series of palaces decorated with cold marble, silver-braided bedspreads, ice purple paintings of kimilsungia blossoms, and ceilings airbrushed with the cran-apple mist of sunset, as if Liberace’s jet had crashed into Lenin’s tomb.

At two in the morning, the boat finally docked. Fujimoto began serving sushi for men who obviously had been through a long party already. He would come to realize these parties tended to be stacked one atop another, sometimes four in a row, spreading out over days.

All the men wore military uniforms except for one imperious fellow in a casual sports tracksuit. This man was curious about the fish. He asked Fujimoto about the marbled, fleshy cuts he was preparing.

“That’s toro,” Fujimoto told him.

For the rest of the night, this man kept calling out, “Toro, one more!”

The next day, Fujimoto was talking to the mamasan of his hotel. She was holding a newspaper, the official Rodong Sinmun, and on the front page was a photo of the man in the tracksuit. Fujimoto told her this was the man he’d just served dinner.

“She started trembling,” Fujimoto said of the moment he realized the man’s true identity. “Then I started trembling.”

The man in the tracksuit invited Fujimoto back to make more sushi. Fujimoto didn’t speak Korean, so he had a government-appointed interpreter with him at all times. At the end of the evening, a valet handed the interpreter an envelope.

“From Jang-gun-nim,” the valet said.

Perhaps the reason Fujimoto hadn’t known he’d been serving Kim Jong-il was because “no one ever called him by his real name,” Fujimoto said. “Never.”


The sushi of Jiro’s dreams will run you $20/minute

Sukiyabashi Jiro is a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Tokyo that many say serves the best sushi in the world. The chef/owner, 86-year-old Jiro Ono, was the subject of last year’s excellent Jiro Dreams of Sushi documentary film.

Adam Goldberg of A Life Worth Eating ate at Sukiyabashi Jiro yesterday. The meal was 21 courses, about US$380 per person (according the web site, excluding drinks), and lasted only 19 minutes. That’s more than a course a minute and, Goldberg estimates, around $20 per person per minute. And apparently totally worth it.

Jiro's sushi

Goldberg has photos of each course up on Flickr and his site has a write-up of his 2009 meal.

Three slices of tuna came next, akami, chu-toro, and oo-toro increasing from lean, to medium fatty, to extremely fatty cuts. The akami (lean toro) was the most tender slice of tuna I’ve ever tasted that did not contain noticeable marbelization. The tuna was marinated in soy sauce for several minutes before service, perhaps contributing to this unique texture. The medium fatty tuna had an interesting mix of crunch and fat, while the fatty tuna just completely melted in my mouth. My friend with whom I shared this meal began to tear (I kid you not).

Lest you think Goldberg’s meal was an anomaly, this is a typical meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro. Dave Arnold wrote about his experience earlier this year:

The sushi courses came out at a rate of one per minute. 19 courses in 19 minutes. No ordering, no real talking โ€” just making sushi and eating sushi. After the sushi is done you are motioned to leave the sushi bar and sit at a booth where you are served your melon. We took that melon at a leisurely 10 minute pace, leaving us with a bill of over $300 per person for just under 30 minutes time. Nastassia and Mark thought the pace was absurd and unpleasant. They felt obliged to keep up with Jiro’s pace. I didn’t feel obliged, but kept up anyway. I didn’t mind the speed. I could have easily eaten even faster, but I’m an inhuman eating machine โ€” or so I’m told. At the end of the meal, Jiro went outside the restaurant and stood guard at the entrance, waiting to bid us formal adieu. This made Nastassia even more nervous about rushing to get out. Not me. At over 10 dollars a minute I have no problem letting an 86 year old man stand and wait for me to finish my melon if he wants to.

(via โ˜…kathryn)


The sushi economy

Adding sushi to the ever-growing list of everyday consumables as economic indicators: steak, Big Macs, Starbucks coffee, Coca-Cola, and cigarettes.


Sushi is doing well in many cultures

Sushi is doing well in many cultures outside Japan and the US, showing up in places like Brazil and Moscow.