5 ms·

I read stories like this, and I wonder: does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? The way sushi chefs talk about sushi makes it sou

I read stories like this, and I wonder: does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? The way sushi chefs talk about sushi makes it sound like there's some sort of massive, order-of-magnitude difference between them and the "sushi men". But at the end of the day, it's still fundamentally fish over rice. I can't help but wonder: if you look at the high-end sushi biz with perfect objectivity, is it one of those "Joe Biden eating a sandwich" things? And if not, why aren't most other "quick" foods susceptible to this level of rigor and scrutiny? Guess I'll have to visit Japan to find out.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
joshvm 11y ago
I personally don't think that years spent washing rice will improve the taste of the food, but it may give the chef an appreciation for what he's doing. The biggest difference between sushi joints is quality of fish. Everywhere in Japan can get fresh fish daily. The best I've had outside Japan was in Tenerife at the fish market in Santa Cruz. A lot of foreign places skimp because they don't care and neither do their customers. In Japan you wouldn't want to be known as "the guy who makes crappy sushi". In the same vein, does the Japanese tea ceremony produce objectively better tea? Probably not, but it's a ritual.
- im2w1l 11y ago
  It produces a better tea drinking experience. Well at least for me. I love rituals. Even a ritual as simple as popping a piece of lime into a bottle of Corona does it for me.
victorology 11y ago
I can't answer your question but I don't think sushi is just fish over rice. I just came back from Tokyo where I visited several highly regarded sushi restaurants. Rice and especially the temperature for which it's served is highly important. I ate a chirashi bowl and while the fish on top was excellent, I was actually more impressed with the rice. I also like how there's that perfect balance. The chef makes a piece of nigiri and you put it in your mouth. No need for extra soy sauce or wasabi. The fish melts in your mouth. On one day, I went to an excellent restaurant for sushi at lunch and didn't have plans for dinner so I stopped into a kaiten (conveyer belt) sushi place. I left after eating 2 plates (4 pieces). I had eaten at this kaizen place before and enjoyed it but after having a great experience for lunch, I just couldn't do it.
dagw 11y ago
Having never been a huge fan of sushi, I recently had my first meal at a high end sushi place and the difference was massive. For the first time ever I really 'got' sushi. That being said the difference was 90% in the fish. Sure they probably used higher quality fish, but they also used different fish and experimented with different cuts of fish than the low-to-midend places and that made a massive difference.
venomsnake 11y ago
> I read stories like this, and I wonder: does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? Probably not. With a proper training schedule and applying basic engineering/scientific approach, I doubt it would take much time to learn to wash rice to its proper starchness needed for sushi. But when you are buying sushi you are buying a ritual. Not food. So your chef must have washed rice for 3 years to make it real ... It amazes me how the Japanese are so good at extracting value and price premium for everything that is related to their way of life.
- anon4 11y ago
  I just wish there was a place serving good sushi as just food, rather than as ritual.
- lmm 11y ago
  But that's where the value lies, no? Money in your bank account doesn't feel good in and of itself. I think the rise of hipsterism over here is the same process.
teekert 11y ago
Or watch: Jiro Dreams of Sushi: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/
59nadir 11y ago
> Guess I'll have to visit Japan to find out. Given that the competition for a good sushi place is much tougher and they have a long standing history of this, of course sushi in Japan will be better. It doesn't say anything about whether or not these rituals and power structures are important, though.
Canada 11y ago
> does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? I think so. Preparing rice properly is not easy. Most of the time it's not done well, even in Japan. > The way sushi chefs talk about sushi makes it sound like there's some sort of massive, order-of-magnitude difference between them and the "sushi men". The way hackers talk about code makes it sound like there's some sort of massive, order-of-magnitude difference between them and some guy who started making web sites with Wordpress a couple years ago. Having sushi prepared by a man who knows the names and favors of hundreds of different kinds of fish by heart, who knows exactly what time of year they're best, how to perfectly cut and season them, what temperature each needs to be served at, who has access to buy the best of the best and who won't accept any compromise on the rice is objectively different. I also love the cheap junk food rolls. The ones that come with a generous amount of spicy mayo, tempura flakes and all that... but how much skill does it really take to prepare that? Deep fried stuff and favored mayo makes anything taste good. It's like the difference between a cigarette and a cigar. Sure, they're both tobacco, and maybe the cigar is overpriced, but they're objectively not the same experience.
- jmspring 11y ago
  You are correct, experience to distinguish differences is important. The original commentor really went for the "it's just X, why is it better than Y". There are some who have the experience, pallet, and knowledge where they could easily answer that question across every nuance brought up. At the same point, given the tone of the original comment, there are people where any explanation will not make a difference. Even more absurd is the main negative commentators may be the same type of people to push one popular coding solution over another because "popular". Just like becoming adept with coding (not instantaneous web scale, redesign a few months later), cooking, knowledge of ingredients, experimentation, and learning takes time. Three years on rice? The Japanese have built a culture around learning very specific techniques in-depth which has merit. Your skepticism is spot on. The OC and similar comments seem typical of a tech culture that needs to get out and experience more.
  - archagon 11y ago
    Blind studies have shown that wine experts aren't nearly as good at identifying wine as they think they are. Same thing with high-end audio. People are incredibly susceptible to the placebo effect, and I think it's good to be skeptical when it comes to sensory matters — especially ones where the entrenched position is "this is sooo much better than everything else" and the price (whether in dollars or years of life given) is incredibly high. The brain is incentivized to value the product in these kinds of situation far out of proportion to its actual value.
anjc 11y ago
> I read stories like this, and I wonder: does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? It's tutelage and discipline. Someone who hasn't worked in a busy kitchen wouldn't understand how much mental/physical discipline is required. "Paying your dues" is pretty common, around the world.
crdb 11y ago
This is true of ALL arts and endeavours more generally: that it takes years of first hand experience to be able to appreciate the last stretch of 80/20 (i.e. the last 20% that takes 80% of the effort to achieve). On top of this, there are many things unique to Japanese (Kamakura period and later) philosophy that one should understand to gain contextual awareness. For an example that will be close to the HN readership, to a freshly graduated Harvard MBA and former McKinsey consultant with a BA in Economics, a self-taught full stack web developer with a couple years experience is for all intents and purposes the same in skills as an MIT post-doc in computer science with a few papers published (I've also met some "business" folks who think the web dev is "superior" because he "gets things done" and his output is "prettier"). I personally think that one should achieve depth in at least one field to appreciate just how hard it is to get to the top of it. As a former classical musician, I can absolutely tell the difference between a good pianist such as you might find playing on a typical night at the Lincoln Centre in New York, and a "once in a generation" pianist such as Richter; this came at the cost of perhaps 2 decades of purposeful study and practicing the art. But my friends with little experience of classical music do not get quite as excited about Richter. The Japanese are also unique due to the history of their country shaping their philosophy of art (which I will try to summarize based on my very limited understanding - I'd love to be corrected by more knowledgeable readers). The Heian-period aristocrats, who looked up to the mainland Chinese civilisation, became so decadent and self-focused in their seeking of ever increasing sophistication that they completely lost interest in the running of their own country and the resulting chaos led to the rise of warlords (Daimyo) and a ruling military elite structure based in many parts on fighting ability (this is not unique to Japan: "may they eat cake!"). The Heian period marked spirits (exiling someone from court for having composed a distasteful poem or wearing a slightly mismatched ensemble being, generally, not a good governance principle). So when the Daimyo stopped fighting each other, united under the Tokugawa shogunate, thus having more time to do things other than get good at fighting [1], they sought to display status in other less flashy ways (this did happen later - cf the Rinpa school of painting), a form of counter-signalling based on taste rather than wealth, such as the very materially simple tea ceremony and teahouse. In other words, it's not about the tea, but about the way it is served and the contextual notes. This was helped by the idea that Spartans make better warriors than hedonists. On top of this and perhaps linked ("dying a good warrior death young, is more honorable and valuable than dying old in your bed having not fought"), the philosophy of art tends towards valuing things like the "ephemeral nature of life" and making very subtle statements related to it. For example, there is a phenomenon in Japan of "the first tuna catch of the year" which is a very expensive and prized fish, almost a celebration. But for you, that's just a slice of tuna, and chemically, it might just be the very same composition as much of the tuna on offer the rest of the year. It would be missing the point - it is the act of catching the first tuna of the year (or it might be the first tuna caught after they come back from a migration where they get fat or something - it's seasonal, I can't remember the details), and the eating of that tuna at that particular time, that is valued by the consumer. Similarly, the rice is designed to be served at a specific temperature, and to "just" hold together at that temperature and with that mix and at that amount of time after being hand shaped for you, and an experienced consumer will appreciate the texture and cooking level of the rice and be satisfied to have had the experience of that precise moment in time and the ephemeral nature of it, much more than by any feeling of satiety. Now personally I am happy eating the sushi at the standing sushi stand at Tokyo Station in B1 of the Yaesu exit (Uogashi?). That's as good as I can tell the difference and the cheapest I know (around $10-20 a go). So, I'll probably never fork out $400 for Jiro, because I know that's where my limit lies and I couldn't appreciate the conversation anyway (which is a great part of the experience, and why Jiro proper doesn't allow non-Japanese speakers to book). But that's also because I do not wish to invest time and effort into getting to a knowledge level where I could truly appreciate Jiro. I'm also avoiding attending any No theatre performances because, again, have no desire to spend years studying the art. In other words, it's good to decide whether or not you want to gain depth in a field; if so, time to put in serious effort and do much reading; if not, one should (in my opinion) be aware of one's limits and unknown unknowns and not worry too much about not appreciating said field. But there is absolutely an objective level of difference between the top performers and the middling ones in all fields, even if outsiders cannot perceive it instinctively. [1] As an example of the discussions of the transition period: 47 of a few hundred samurai that saw their master being betrayed and killed plotted revenge for two years, then executed it (google "47 Ronin", if you didn't see the Keanu movie). In the Hagakure, Tsunetomo criticizes the 47 Ronin for not having immediately committed seppuku, which even if not achieving revenge, would have been the honorable thing to do, instead of deciding to live. Tsunetomo was in turn criticized as being too much of a typical peacetime warrior, choosing honour and appearances over winning, in contrast to a Miyamoto Musashi whose methods were not always clean (such as arriving late to his duels to put the adversary off balance) allowing him a legendary record of victories. Or indeed Ieyasu Tokugawa himself.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

joshvm 11y ago

I personally don't think that years spent washing rice will improve the taste of the food, but it may give the chef an appreciation for what he's doing. The biggest difference between sushi joints is quality of fish. Everywhere in Japan can get fresh fish daily. The best I've had outside Japan was in Tenerife at the fish market in Santa Cruz. A lot of foreign places skimp because they don't care and neither do their customers. In Japan you wouldn't want to be known as "the guy who makes crappy sushi". In the same vein, does the Japanese tea ceremony produce objectively better tea? Probably not, but it's a ritual.

im2w1l 11y ago
It produces a better tea drinking experience. Well at least for me. I love rituals. Even a ritual as simple as popping a piece of lime into a bottle of Corona does it for me.

victorology 11y ago

I can't answer your question but I don't think sushi is just fish over rice. I just came back from Tokyo where I visited several highly regarded sushi restaurants. Rice and especially the temperature for which it's served is highly important. I ate a chirashi bowl and while the fish on top was excellent, I was actually more impressed with the rice. I also like how there's that perfect balance. The chef makes a piece of nigiri and you put it in your mouth. No need for extra soy sauce or wasabi. The fish melts in your mouth. On one day, I went to an excellent restaurant for sushi at lunch and didn't have plans for dinner so I stopped into a kaiten (conveyer belt) sushi place. I left after eating 2 plates (4 pieces). I had eaten at this kaizen place before and enjoyed it but after having a great experience for lunch, I just couldn't do it.

dagw 11y ago

Having never been a huge fan of sushi, I recently had my first meal at a high end sushi place and the difference was massive. For the first time ever I really 'got' sushi. That being said the difference was 90% in the fish. Sure they probably used higher quality fish, but they also used different fish and experimented with different cuts of fish than the low-to-midend places and that made a massive difference.

venomsnake 11y ago

> I read stories like this, and I wonder: does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? Probably not. With a proper training schedule and applying basic engineering/scientific approach, I doubt it would take much time to learn to wash rice to its proper starchness needed for sushi. But when you are buying sushi you are buying a ritual. Not food. So your chef must have washed rice for 3 years to make it real ... It amazes me how the Japanese are so good at extracting value and price premium for everything that is related to their way of life.

anon4 11y ago
I just wish there was a place serving good sushi as just food, rather than as ritual.
lmm 11y ago
But that's where the value lies, no? Money in your bank account doesn't feel good in and of itself. I think the rise of hipsterism over here is the same process.

teekert 11y ago

Or watch: Jiro Dreams of Sushi: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/

59nadir 11y ago

> Guess I'll have to visit Japan to find out. Given that the competition for a good sushi place is much tougher and they have a long standing history of this, of course sushi in Japan will be better. It doesn't say anything about whether or not these rituals and power structures are important, though.

Canada 11y ago

> does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? I think so. Preparing rice properly is not easy. Most of the time it's not done well, even in Japan. > The way sushi chefs talk about sushi makes it sound like there's some sort of massive, order-of-magnitude difference between them and the "sushi men". The way hackers talk about code makes it sound like there's some sort of massive, order-of-magnitude difference between them and some guy who started making web sites with Wordpress a couple years ago. Having sushi prepared by a man who knows the names and favors of hundreds of different kinds of fish by heart, who knows exactly what time of year they're best, how to perfectly cut and season them, what temperature each needs to be served at, who has access to buy the best of the best and who won't accept any compromise on the rice is objectively different. I also love the cheap junk food rolls. The ones that come with a generous amount of spicy mayo, tempura flakes and all that... but how much skill does it really take to prepare that? Deep fried stuff and favored mayo makes anything taste good. It's like the difference between a cigarette and a cigar. Sure, they're both tobacco, and maybe the cigar is overpriced, but they're objectively not the same experience.

jmspring 11y ago
You are correct, experience to distinguish differences is important. The original commentor really went for the "it's just X, why is it better than Y". There are some who have the experience, pallet, and knowledge where they could easily answer that question across every nuance brought up. At the same point, given the tone of the original comment, there are people where any explanation will not make a difference. Even more absurd is the main negative commentators may be the same type of people to push one popular coding solution over another because "popular". Just like becoming adept with coding (not instantaneous web scale, redesign a few months later), cooking, knowledge of ingredients, experimentation, and learning takes time. Three years on rice? The Japanese have built a culture around learning very specific techniques in-depth which has merit. Your skepticism is spot on. The OC and similar comments seem typical of a tech culture that needs to get out and experience more.
- archagon 11y ago
  Blind studies have shown that wine experts aren't nearly as good at identifying wine as they think they are. Same thing with high-end audio. People are incredibly susceptible to the placebo effect, and I think it's good to be skeptical when it comes to sensory matters — especially ones where the entrenched position is "this is sooo much better than everything else" and the price (whether in dollars or years of life given) is incredibly high. The brain is incentivized to value the product in these kinds of situation far out of proportion to its actual value.

anjc 11y ago

> I read stories like this, and I wonder: does washing rice for 3 years really make your sushi that much better? It's tutelage and discipline. Someone who hasn't worked in a busy kitchen wouldn't understand how much mental/physical discipline is required. "Paying your dues" is pretty common, around the world.

crdb 11y ago

This is true of ALL arts and endeavours more generally: that it takes years of first hand experience to be able to appreciate the last stretch of 80/20 (i.e. the last 20% that takes 80% of the effort to achieve). On top of this, there are many things unique to Japanese (Kamakura period and later) philosophy that one should understand to gain contextual awareness. For an example that will be close to the HN readership, to a freshly graduated Harvard MBA and former McKinsey consultant with a BA in Economics, a self-taught full stack web developer with a couple years experience is for all intents and purposes the same in skills as an MIT post-doc in computer science with a few papers published (I've also met some "business" folks who think the web dev is "superior" because he "gets things done" and his output is "prettier"). I personally think that one should achieve depth in at least one field to appreciate just how hard it is to get to the top of it. As a former classical musician, I can absolutely tell the difference between a good pianist such as you might find playing on a typical night at the Lincoln Centre in New York, and a "once in a generation" pianist such as Richter; this came at the cost of perhaps 2 decades of purposeful study and practicing the art. But my friends with little experience of classical music do not get quite as excited about Richter. The Japanese are also unique due to the history of their country shaping their philosophy of art (which I will try to summarize based on my very limited understanding - I'd love to be corrected by more knowledgeable readers). The Heian-period aristocrats, who looked up to the mainland Chinese civilisation, became so decadent and self-focused in their seeking of ever increasing sophistication that they completely lost interest in the running of their own country and the resulting chaos led to the rise of warlords (Daimyo) and a ruling military elite structure based in many parts on fighting ability (this is not unique to Japan: "may they eat cake!"). The Heian period marked spirits (exiling someone from court for having composed a distasteful poem or wearing a slightly mismatched ensemble being, generally, not a good governance principle). So when the Daimyo stopped fighting each other, united under the Tokugawa shogunate, thus having more time to do things other than get good at fighting [1], they sought to display status in other less flashy ways (this did happen later - cf the Rinpa school of painting), a form of counter-signalling based on taste rather than wealth, such as the very materially simple tea ceremony and teahouse. In other words, it's not about the tea, but about the way it is served and the contextual notes. This was helped by the idea that Spartans make better warriors than hedonists. On top of this and perhaps linked ("dying a good warrior death young, is more honorable and valuable than dying old in your bed having not fought"), the philosophy of art tends towards valuing things like the "ephemeral nature of life" and making very subtle statements related to it. For example, there is a phenomenon in Japan of "the first tuna catch of the year" which is a very expensive and prized fish, almost a celebration. But for you, that's just a slice of tuna, and chemically, it might just be the very same composition as much of the tuna on offer the rest of the year. It would be missing the point - it is the act of catching the first tuna of the year (or it might be the first tuna caught after they come back from a migration where they get fat or something - it's seasonal, I can't remember the details), and the eating of that tuna at that particular time, that is valued by the consumer. Similarly, the rice is designed to be served at a specific temperature, and to "just" hold together at that temperature and with that mix and at that amount of time after being hand shaped for you, and an experienced consumer will appreciate the texture and cooking level of the rice and be satisfied to have had the experience of that precise moment in time and the ephemeral nature of it, much more than by any feeling of satiety. Now personally I am happy eating the sushi at the standing sushi stand at Tokyo Station in B1 of the Yaesu exit (Uogashi?). That's as good as I can tell the difference and the cheapest I know (around $10-20 a go). So, I'll probably never fork out $400 for Jiro, because I know that's where my limit lies and I couldn't appreciate the conversation anyway (which is a great part of the experience, and why Jiro proper doesn't allow non-Japanese speakers to book). But that's also because I do not wish to invest time and effort into getting to a knowledge level where I could truly appreciate Jiro. I'm also avoiding attending any No theatre performances because, again, have no desire to spend years studying the art. In other words, it's good to decide whether or not you want to gain depth in a field; if so, time to put in serious effort and do much reading; if not, one should (in my opinion) be aware of one's limits and unknown unknowns and not worry too much about not appreciating said field. But there is absolutely an objective level of difference between the top performers and the middling ones in all fields, even if outsiders cannot perceive it instinctively. [1] As an example of the discussions of the transition period: 47 of a few hundred samurai that saw their master being betrayed and killed plotted revenge for two years, then executed it (google "47 Ronin", if you didn't see the Keanu movie). In the Hagakure, Tsunetomo criticizes the 47 Ronin for not having immediately committed seppuku, which even if not achieving revenge, would have been the honorable thing to do, instead of deciding to live. Tsunetomo was in turn criticized as being too much of a typical peacetime warrior, choosing honour and appearances over winning, in contrast to a Miyamoto Musashi whose methods were not always clean (such as arriving late to his duels to put the adversary off balance) allowing him a legendary record of victories. Or indeed Ieyasu Tokugawa himself.