Don’t you dare call yourself a fan of sushi unless you know and practise the proper way of eating sushi! Or, you’ll just be an embarrassment to your family. Wait, was that too far? We didn’t actually mean that but we would really like to emphasise on the proper way of eating sushi. When you’re eating sushi the correct way, not only you get the fullest enjoyment out of the experience but it also shows that you’re respecting generations of effort. Without further ado, let’s dive right in!
Preparing To Eat
1) Pour only a little amount of soy sauce into the saucer.
You can always add more later if needed. Wasting soy sauce is a serious taboo in Japanese dining. It’s a serious no-no as well when people add wasabi into the soy sauce. Although this is a common practice, dipping your sushi into this mess is not the best way to enjoy it.
2) Don’t rub your chopsticks together.
If you’re at a nice Japanese restaurant, rubbing your wooden chopsticks together after breaking them apart can often be misleading. Rubbing them together is intended to break off the loose bits of wood, but when you do it, you’re inadvertently telling the chef “your utensils are cheap”.
How To Eat Sushi The Right Way
1) Try eating sushi in a certain order.
Eating them following a certain order is to enhance the taste and the overall experience. According to renowned Japanese Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, owner of 47 restaurants and 6 Nobu hotels around the world, it’s more ideal to start by eating fish with a lighter flavour and then move onto fish with heavier flavour (fatty fish). The final sushi may be better as a roll – opt for cucumber roll, oshinko (daikon radish) roll and sour prawns.
2) DO NOT I repeat DO NOT ever drench your sushi in soy sauce.
You only need a little bit, otherwise, you’ll overpower the taste of the fish. Turn the piece upside down by rotating it, then dip only the fish into the soy sauce – never the rice. You can either use a pair of chopsticks or your hands for this step – whichever’s more comfortable!
3) What’s the point of ginger?
When you order sashimi, they would always come with ginger. You must be wondering “why?”. Ginger is eaten in between different types of sushi for cleansing your palate for the next fish.
4) Sushi is best enjoyed in one bite.
Sushi Fun Facts (Did you know?)
Before you go, let us hit you with some really bizarre facts about sushi that you totally didn’t have to know, but we’re going to do it anyway. So, just try to have fun while reading them lah.
1) The longest sushi roll ever created measured 2,521.74 meters (about 8,270 ft.) and was made in Russia in December 2011 at the Sushkof Restaurant. You should totally search it up because it looked like some kind of creature from another planet to us. Would you dare to eat it? – Source
2) There is a company in Vancouver that provides sushi served on nude female models with rules of no talking to the model, no touching and no lewd gestures or comments. No business for kiddies here. – Source
You’re All Set For Your Japanese Meal!
We hope that this list was helpful for you peeps, if not at least funny! Now, you’re all set and ready to go show off your sushi knowledge the next time you dine with your friends and enjoy that delicious sushi without being judged by others. Let’s learn to be more appreciative of sushi aye!
