By Trevor Corson

Today, bluefin tuna is considered the pinnacle of fine sushi, especially bluefin toro—the fatty belly cuts of the fish. This is kind of funny, because just a few decades ago the Japanese considered toro such a disgusting part of the tuna that the only people who would eat it were impoverished manual laborers. And prior to about the 1920s, no self-respecting Japanese person would eat any kind of tuna at all if they could possibly avoid it. Tuna was so despised in Japan that all tuna species qualified for an official term of disparagement: gezakana, or “inferior fish.”

In the old days in Japan, if you had no choice but to eat tuna you’d do everything you could do get rid of the bloody metallic taste of the fresh red meat. One trick was to bury the tuna in the ground for four days so that the muscle would actually ferment, which led to tuna being called by the nickname shibi—literally, “four days.”

Not until the 1840s did an unintentional bumper crop of bluefin in Japan cause sushi makers to try to sell the fish at all, and these were rather pathetic street vendors catering to the lowest classes. They did their best to mask the inherent flavor of the flesh by smothering the red flesh in soy sauce and marinating it for as long as possible. Even today, purveyors that handle bluefin may soak it in ice water all night in an attempt to expunge the less desirable components of the fish’s smell.

The arrival of refrigeration technology made it possible to distribute tuna more widely, and as people gradually grew used to seeing the red meat of tuna on sushi, disdain for the fish decreased. But the fatty cuts of the fish were still considered garbage. There are reports that tuna belly was a common ingredient in Japanese cat food.

After World War II, with the American Occupation and the influx of Western culture into Japan, the Japanese began eating a more Westernized diet, including red meat and fattier cuts of it, which paved the way for the acceptance of tuna and toro in more recent decades in both Japan and the West.

But the current bluefin fad—Atlantic bluefin in particular—remains a historical anomaly, and one partly manufactured deliberately, for corporate profit. During the heyday of Japan’s export economy, Japanese airline cargo executives promoted Atlantic bluefin for sushi so they’d have something to fill their planes up with on the flight from East Coast US cities back to Tokyo. And as the recent documentary film The End of the Line has reported, Mitsubishi Corporation, one of the largest bluefin distributors in the world, now appears to be stockpiling massive amounts of bluefin in enormous high-tech deep freezers so it can make a killing dolling them at inflated prices out after the wild fish is all but gone.

Back in Japan you can still find a few old-school sushi aficionados who disdain bluefin toro. They’ll tell you that toro is child’s play. Anyone can enjoy that simplistic, melt-in-your-mouth succulence, they say. It takes the real skill of a connoisseur to appreciate the more subtle and complex tastes and textures of the traditional kings of the sushi bar—delicate whitefish like flounder and sea bream being some of the best, along with mackerels, jacks, clams, squid, and other types of shellfish that have been popular all along. Personally, I won’t eat bluefin anymore, and I don’t miss it at all. My sushi eating experiences have actually become more interesting as a result.

This post was first published on The Atlantic.

By Trevor Corson

Some days I think the most influential Japanese chef in America might actually have been John Belushi.

If you’ve seen Belushi’s “Samurai Delicatessen” skit, originally performed on Saturday Night Live in 1976, you’ll remember him channeling a touchy Japanese chef, perpetually on the verge of violence, who screamed out loud while slicing ingredients with a sword.

Belushi’s character was a riot, but would you really want him making your lunch? Apparently, for many sushi lovers in America, the answer is “yes.”

Consider this inquiry I received from a reader named Peter the other day:

Does etiquette permit a customer to request sushi without any wasabi? I’ve always been afraid to ask. … There are those famous sushi chefs who kick you out of the restaurant.

Here we have a patron with a simple request—no different, in fact, from a customer at a deli who asks that his sandwich be “very lean on the corned beef,” as the customer does in Belushi’s “Samurai Delicatessen.”

Yet poor Peter is genuinely terrified that the chef will banish him for his insolence, if not disembowel him with a fish knife.

It seems to me that no dining experience should involve this much fear. Unless you’re deliberately after a plate of poisonous blowfish. But as Peter’s comment reveals, many sushi chefs in America have built reputations by inspiring just such dread.

Chief among these is probably Kazunori Nozawa in Los Angeles, whose habit of ejecting customers for minor infractions of etiquette earned him the nickname “the Sushi Nazi”—a formulation borrowed from a popular episode of Seinfeld that featured a dictatorial soup vendor called “the Soup Nazi.”

Every profession has its share of nitpickers and curmudgeons. So why have Nozawa and his ilk acquired such fame? Last fall, the Wall Street Journal even published a report about them called “The Sushi Bullies.” The article claimed that such behavior is the norm in Japan.

But the article also quoted a Japanese chef and instructor named Toshi Sugiura who said quite the opposite—that traditionally, sushi chefs are trained to be polite and friendly, like neighborhood bartenders. So which is true? Is the caricature of the crazy samurai chef based in reality or not?

Sugiura is someone I happen to know well, having spent several months watching him work behind his sushi bar. He has a forceful personality, but he’s more monk than samurai—he wins you over with his warmth. He inspires his American customers to follow proper etiquette, and eat authentic sushi, without threatening anyone with eviction. In fact, his customers are his pals, and the atmosphere at his sushi bar can be delightful and even boisterous.

My own experience of Japanese chefs in Japan, acquired while residing there for several years and eating sushi with Japanese friends at their favorite sushi bars, was that they were more like friendly neighborhood bartenders than surly samurai.

There’s a well-known short story in Japan called “Sushi,” written in 1939 by Kanoko Okamoto, that gives a sense of what a typical old-school sushi bar ought to be like. The chef knows his customers by name and remembers what each one likes to eat and in what order. The atmosphere is relaxed, sometimes even silly.

Why, then, do we assume that Japanese chefs should be tyrants, and that we should put up with their reign of terror, and even reward it? Maybe it’s because we believe we’re getting something authentic. We conjure up a vision of the stern Japanese warrior and feel obliged to become his supplicants. If that’s the case, I can think of a word that describes this impulse well: masochism.

I’d rather enjoy good food along with good company and be treated with respect and perhaps even a dose of charm. Chefs like Sugiura are proof it’s possible for a sushi master to educate Americans into the finer points of their tradition without making us feel like juvenile delinquents.

I’d even argue that sushi chefs ignore at their peril the fact that the relationship between restaurateurs and customers should be a two-way street.

Take bluefin tuna. Most sushi chefs are still blindly serving it, but consumers are waking up to the fact that it’s becoming an endangered fish. I myself won’t eat bluefin anymore. But does etiquette permit a customer to request sushi without it?

It certainly ought to, and even the most stubborn of chefs had better listen. Because if they don’t, sooner or later they’ll lose business to the hip new sushi joint next door that just started serving a menu of sustainable seafood.

As for requesting sushi with less wasabi, wouldn’t it be nice if our friend Peter could feel comfortable enough to ask without fearing for his life? Because then he might learn from his friendly neighborhood chef that sushi with less wasabi is actually the more authentic choice.

“Sushi with too much wasabi is just bad sushi,” the chef would say, smiling. “Here, try this piece, I’ve made it with just the right amount of wasabi—only a tiny bit.”

And if Peter still felt it was too much for him, the chef could act like that chef in the Japanese short story, and say, “Okay, from now on, I’ll remember to put almost no wasabi at all in your sushi.”

And probably, Peter would keep going back to that sushi bar for the rest of his life.

John Belushi was a comedic genius. For my money, the samurai chef shouldn’t be something to fear. It should remain, as Belushi intended, something to laugh at.

Screen shot at top: Saturday Night Live on Hulu.com.

This post was first published on The Atlantic.

By Trevor Corson

Big things are happening this summer for a big fish. If conservationists get their way, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, a majestic swimmer that’s long been overharvested for the sushi trade, may soon receive protection as an endangered species. Many sushi lovers are understandably upset, because they don’t want to give up their favorite meal.

But I sit down for a sushi meal at some of the best restaurants in America almost every week – as part of my efforts to educate Americans about sushi tradition – and I can safely say that giving up sushi altogether to save the bluefin would be a terrible idea. In fact, the plight of the bluefin is an opportunity for us to enjoy better sushi than ever.

The bluefin tuna is a tiger of the sea, with glistening red flesh that can fetch tens of thousands of dollars per fish. As sushi has spread across America and around the globe, the bluefin has been decimated.

The situation is so dire that efforts to protect the fish are finally gaining traction.

In May, a group of celebrities, including Sting, Elle Macpherson, and Charlize Theron, spoke out against the consumption of bluefin, and in June, Prince Albert of Monaco spearheaded a commitment to list the Atlantic population as an endangered species.

In July, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged France’s support, followed immediately by leaders in Britain. And earlier this month, a former Japanese fisheries minister declared that even the Japanese will have to get used to eating a lot less bluefin. Now the media and blogosphere are alight with talk of culinary doom.

The end of sushi, it seems, is upon us.

But such talk could hurt the bluefin even more.

Sushi connoisseurs tend to be obsessive folks – I know because I am one. If we think we must sacrifice good sushi to save the bluefin, we may just as well keep eating bluefin.

Indeed, the best-known sushi chef in the world, Nobu Matsuhisa, has refused to remove Atlantic bluefin from his 24 luxury eateries around the globe, despite increasing pressure from activists, because he believes connoisseurs won’t dine in his restaurants without it. A Nobu spokesman pledged to list the fish on Nobu’s London menu as “endangered,” but the company then reneged, calling it only “environmentally threatened.”

Chef Nobu may have forgotten the special joys of his own tradition. I wish he would join me for one of my educational sushi dinners to be reminded what makes a sushi lover a true connoisseur.

The people who come to my dinners are American sushi eaters ready to experience and understand a completely authentic Japanese meal. I work with Japanese master chefs, and we provide sushi as it was served in Tokyo in the old days.

And guess what? There’s no bluefin on the plate. There’s no toro, no hamachi, no unagi, and no fatty salmon. None of these usual suspects of today’s global sushi business are part of the traditional sushi lineage. In fact, until just a few decades ago the Japanese considered tuna a garbage fish.

It wasn’t until after World War II, when the Japanese started eating a more Westernized diet, with red meat and fattier cuts of it, that the bluefin fad began. And it was a fad practically invented by Japanese airlines, so they could load their international flights with pricey cargo.

Instead, my dinner guests and I savor the old-school kings of the sushi bar – smaller, lighter, leaner, and more local fish and shellfish that have more interesting flavors and textures.

These items can take some getting used to, and require knowledge about what to look for and how to appreciate it. But I’ve never met a sushi lover who didn’t want to acquire more expertise and experience with the authentic sushi tradition.

My guests finish dinner entranced by their new awareness and these new tastes. In Japan, the most hard-core aficionados pass over the fatty cuts of bluefin, considering them too simplistic a pleasure. Once you experience sushi’s full range, you begin to understand why.

Perhaps the most significant development for bluefin in recent days was a little-noticed event this month in Seattle.

A Japanese chef named Hajime Sato did what celebrity chef Nobu has not had the wisdom to do. With the help of a seafood conservation expert named Casson Trenor, Chef Sato converted his sushi bar, Mashiko, to an entirely sustainable menu.

Although a few other sustainable sushi bars have sprung up in recent months, this was a first for a Japanese chef in America – perhaps anywhere.

Sato no longer serves bluefin. And he’s thrilled. “I found probably 20 more fish that no one uses for sushi anymore,” he says. “My restaurant has so much more different fish that I can’t fit them all into the new menu.”

Sushi doesn’t need to die because the bluefin is endangered. With our help, sushi can be reborn – better than ever.

This post was originally published by the Christian Science Monitor/Yahoo News.

By Trevor Corson

In Japan, sushi is a man’s world. Male chefs use all manner of excuses to defend their sushi bars against women who want to work there. Women can’t be sushi chefs, they say, because makeup, body lotion, and perfume destroy the flavor of the fish and rice. Some male chefs claim that the area behind the sushi bar is sacred space, and would be defiled by the presence of a woman. Others say women don’t have the reflexes necessary for the knife work.

The most common argument against female sushi chefs is that a woman’s hands are warmer than a man’s—the insinuation being that this warmth can somehow “cook” a piece of raw fish. In fact, a study published in The Lancet in 1998 demonstrated that women are likely to have colder hands than men, as I report in The Story of Sushi.

Last night, the diners in my Monday-night Sushi Concierge class were treated to a gorgeous spread of traditional sushi prepared by one of my new favorite chefs, Ms. Sho at Jewel Bako in New York. Everyone agreed the sushi was exquisite. The only disappointing part of the meal was the thought lurking in the back of my head that Ms. Sho would have had a much harder time in Tokyo getting a job at such a top-notch sushi restaurant than in New York. Well, Japan’s loss, our gain.

The reasons given for why women shouldn’t be sushi chefs are ridiculous, of course. It’s just old-fashioned patriarchal prejudice. Check out my webpage on pioneering women in the world of American sushi, and scroll down for interviews with female sushi chefs in Japan.

And here’s a narrated slideshow I put together for the Atlantic featuring an interesting African American female sushi chef in Memphis.

The real-life main character I follow in The Story of Sushi is a woman named Kate Murray. She has a hard time mastering the art of sushi, but it’s not because her hands are too hot!

Photo: Angela Kim, a sushi chef in Los Angeles, was featured in Inland Living magazine. Photo by William Vasta.

By Trevor Corson

A reader of The Story of Sushi wrote in to ask whether I could recommend a place to eat sushi in Chicago. After reading my book, this person had started to wonder whether their local sushi joint was up to snuff.

I receive these sorts of comments a lot. After reading the book people realize what they’re missing when they settle for their usual, run-of-the-mill sushi experience.

Unfortunately, the tragedy of sushi in America today is that despite there being sushi restaurants everywhere—in the book I report at least 150 in Chicago alone—it’s still often very hard to find a truly authentic and fulfilling sushi experience. Many sushi chefs don’t expect Americans to be able to appreciate the real deal, so it can very difficult to convince them to treat you as they would a customer from Japan.

That’s exactly why I offer the Sushi Concierge service. Since I speak Japanese, and take the time to build a rapport with the chefs I work with over our shared love of sushi tradition, I’m able to act as a middleman between them and the American diners I bring in, fast-tracking my customers so they get the real deal right away, and providing context and cultural background so the real deal makes sense to the American palate.

There’s a problem with all this, though. People who’ve attended one of my Sushi Concierge dinners frequently complain that I have ruined sushi for them—by which they mean the average sushi they used to be so happy to eat. Once you’ve had an authentic sushi dinner, it’s hard to go back!

But that’s part of my teaching, too. I encourage people to eat sushi less often, but when they do eat sushi, eat better, more authentic sushi. It’s worth it.

I wish I could clone myself, and usher people through Sushi Concierge dinners in Chicago and every other American city, too.

For now, if you don’t live in New York or Washington D.C., I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Story of Sushi, arm yourself with the knowledge inside, and then start shopping around for a chef you like. It can take time and patience.

As for Chicago, I generally don’t make recommendations for specific sushi restaurants—here’s why.

Illustration by Craig Phillips for The Atlantic.

By Trevor Corson

A nice surprise reading the Times with breakfast this morning and discovering that the Week in Review section featured an excerpt from my article in the June issue of the Atlantic on how American sushi chefs are helping to bring the cuisine back to its Japanese roots.

Photo: Danish sushi chef Fie Kruse, who is depicted in Trevor Corson’s book The Story of Sushi, prepares dinner for a customer. Photo by Trevor Corson.

By Trevor Corson

Say you walk into a sushi bar in America hungry for an authentic Japanese meal and you’re faced with a choice. There’s an empty seat in front of a chef who looks Japanese. There’s another empty seat in front of a chef who has blond hair and freckles. Which seat would you choose? What if the choice was between a chef who looks Japanese and one who is African-American?

These questions are fodder for my post this week on the Atlantic’s new Food Channel, which prompted some interesting discussion, and for an article I wrote in the June issue of the Atlantic magazine. There’s also an accompanying narrated slideshow, in which I describe how I got interested in the phenomenon and which features several of the surprisingly numerous non-Asian sushi chefs I’ve encountered. As you can see from their photos, they sure don’t look Japanese.

Indeed, one of the ironies here is that many of these non-Asian sushi chefs are offering an experience that is arguably more authentically Japanese than what a lot of Japanese chefs are offering. Yet these American chefs often told me that their American customers frequently give them the cold shoulder, because they don’t look the part. Would you?