Sushi Food Quotes

Zen is a present state of mind where one honors the task they are partaking of, even if the task is sitting still and doing nothing. Zen is engrained in the Japanese way of life. You can see it everywhere: when a sushi chef delicately slices a piece of raw fish, when a retired man watches an autumn leaf fall from a tree in the park, when a mother prepares and places a cup of tea before her child. When actions and thoughts are done with mindfulness, being fully present in the moment, the person performing the action or thought gives honor to the food, an idea, a task, a person, etc.

And yes, we do have some food. Maybe you'd like to join us? Unless you want to stick with your sheep sushi.

Nobody believes in racial profiling until they get a red-haired sushi chef with a southern accent.

I was so mad, I reached into the drawer for her fake sushi eraser and put it in my pocket. Serves her right for being such a big, fat, Eggo-scarfing liar.

I can't imagine a better example of Things To Be Wary Of in the food department than bargain sushi.

Never underestimate the power of cookies.

What’s your favorite food?” “Pad Thai,” he says. “Yours?” “Sushi. They’re almost the same thing.” “Not even close,” he says. “They’re both Asian food.

The world seemed filled with interesting books to read, interesting plays and movies to see, interesting games to play, interesting food to taste, and interesting people to have sex with and sometimes even to fall in love with. To Marx, it seemed foolish not to love as many things as you could. In the first months she knew him, Sadie disparaged Marx to Sam by calling him “the romantic dilettante.” But for Marx, the world was like a breakfast at a five-star hotel in an Asian country—the abundance of it was almost overwhelming. Who wouldn’t want a pineapple smoothie, a roast pork bun, an omelet, pickled vegetables, sushi, and a green-tea-flavored croissant? They were all there for the taking and delicious, in their own way.

We are, after all, citizens of the world - a world filled with bacteria, some friendly, some not so friendly. Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald's? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, Senor Tamale Stand Owner, Sushi-chef-san, Monsieur Bucket-head. What's that feathered game bird, hanging on the porch, getting riper by the day, the body nearly ready to drop off? I want some.

Celebrity chefs are the leaders in the field of food, and we are the led. Why should the leaders of chemical businesses be held responsible for polluting the marine environment with a few grams of effluent, which is sublethal to marine species, while celebrity chefs are turning out endangered fish at several dozen tables a night without enduring a syllable of criticism?

Contrary to popular belief, sushi isn’t about freshness; it’s about timing. Not just having your rice the proper temperature, but also having your fish the perfect age. Serve fish too soon out of the water and the muscles will be tight and the flavor underdeveloped. Wait too long and the protein turns to mush.

The concept of shokunin, an artisan deeply and singularly dedicated to his or her craft, is at the core of Japanese culture. Japan’s most famous shokunin these days is Jiro Ono, immortalized in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but you will encounter his level of relentless focus across the entire food industry.

People always talk about the health benefits of Japanese food,’ he said, ‘but I’m fascinated by other aspects of the Japanese dining experience. Like the whole system of serving food at a counter like this, with the customers all facing the same direction, instead of each other. It’s strange when you think about it. At a sushi bar, for example, everyone’s facing the itamae-san, and you discuss the things you’re eating – what type of squid this is, and where they’re caught, and how this is the season for them but they’ll only be at their best for another couple of weeks, and so on. Discussing the food with the chef even as you eat it – that’s a peculiar system.’ ‘I suppose it is, isn’t it? I don’t go to sushi restaurants very often – they’re so expensive – and I could probably count the number of times I’ve sat at the counter, but I know what you mean. There’s something about that atmosphere.’ ‘At its worst, it’s almost an atmosphere of collusion.’ ‘Collusion?’ ‘Everyone at the counter becomes a member of the group. In some sushi bars, all the customers are regulars and they all know each other. As an outsider, you need courage to walk into a place like that and take a seat. It’s a tight-knit little community, and harmony is of the utmost importance. Nobody’s confronting anyone else individually. The conversation all proceeds through the chef, who’s like a moderator or a master of ceremonies. You couldn’t spend some quiet time with a lover, for example, in a place like that, because you’d be isolating yourselves from the others and spoiling the atmosphere for everyone.

What kind of kids live in Mulhoney, Wisconsin? Would they like me? Would I like them? Have they ever eaten sushi? That's usually how I determine food sophistication. Maybe a personal ad would get the ball rolling: Insightful, hardworking, 16-year-old girl, emotionally generous and witty, seeks friend/pal/chum to while away meaningful hours. Picky eaters need not reply.

A study of New York City seafood done by scientists at nonprofit marine conservation group Oceana found fraud in 58 percent of retail outlets and 39 percent of restaurants. The one especially scary finding that would have my father turning over in his grave was that every sushi restaurant from which samples were collected—100 percent of them—served fake fish. Obviously,

At the front of Sushi Nozawa is a mean woman. When I asked Mom why the woman is so angry, Mom said it’s because she’s Japanese and that it’s cultural. The woman at school who serves lunch is also mean but she is not Japanese. Maybe it’s just serving food that makes people angry. I understand why the people who work here are so angry. I guess it’s like working at a gas station, but instead of cars, they have to fill up people. And people eat slowly and talk about their stupid lives at the table and make each other laugh, but when the waiters come by, the people at the table stop laughing and become quiet like they don’t want to let anyone else know about their great jokes. And if the waiters talk about their own lives, they’re not allowed to talk about how bad it is, only how good it is, like, “I’m doing great, how are you?” And if they say something truthful like, “I’m doing terrible, I’m a waiter here,” they will probably get fired and then they will be even worse. So it’s probably always a good idea to talk about things happily. But sometimes that’s impossible. That’s why I’m giving Sushi Nozawa 16 out of 2000 stars.

We’ve worked together for years, and I don’t even know your favorite food.” That was a lie. I knew she loved sushi because it was neat and easy to eat on the go. I knew she preferred double cheeseburgers when she was on her period and steak, medium rare, at client dinners unless her client was vegetarian, in which case she ordered soup and salad. She liked her wine white, her coffee black, and her gin with a splash of tonic. I knew all of these things because despite her assumption that I paid attention to no one except myself, I couldn’t stop noticing her if my life depended on it. Every detail, every moment, all filed and categorized in the Sloane cabinet of my mind. I would never tell her any of that, though, because if there was one thing sure to send Sloane Kensington running, it was the possibility of intimacy.

In the meantime, I tried my best to acclimate to my new life in the middle of nowhere. I had to get used to the fact that I lived twenty miles from the nearest grocery store. That I couldn’t just run next door when I ran out of eggs. That there was no such thing as sushi. Not that it would matter, anyway. No cowboy on the ranch would touch it. That’s bait, they’d say, laughing at any city person who would convince themselves that such a food was tasty.

What a deeply rich and full-bodied piece of chutoro tuna! The sweet nikiri sauce brushed ever so lightly over it makes the fish's natural umami flavor stand out in stark contrast! *Nikiri sauce is a sweet glaze made from soy sauce, mirin, and other seasonings that are heated just enough to dissipate the alcohol content.* "The akami piece was cured with kombu seaweed. Their savory flavors meld harmoniously in my mouth! And finally there's the rare gill-meat delicacy- the kamatoro! Its almost savage richness is gently wrapped in the sweetly tart freshness of the sushi rice!

She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil.

and Anna could smell sushi, baked bread, and frying hot dogs. She could even catch the faint tang of Indian spices- not the kinds of spices she was used to, of course, the very specific kind in pandhi curry or masala crab, but then she had never come across those flavors outside the small, beautiful corner of India that her mother had once called home. That said, this place did smell yummy. There was food everywhere she looked: street vendors, bakeries, cafés, take-out places, you name it. Hungry Heart Row, that's what this neighborhood was called, and it seemed its residents had taken that very seriously.

The ubiquity of great food in Tokyo is beyond imagination. It's not just that I'm interested in food and pay close attention to restaurants and takeout shops, although that's true. In Tokyo, great food really is in your face, all the time: sushi, yakitori, Korean barbecue, eel, tempura, tonkatsu, bento shops, delis, burgers (Western and Japanese-style), the Japanese take on Western food called yōshoku, and, most of all, noodles. I found this cheap everyday food- lovingly called B-kyū("B-grade") by its fans- so satisfying and so easy on the wallet that I rarely ventured into anything you might call a nice restaurant.

Inside, the house was filled with people dressed in varying interpretations of the party's "Roaring Twenties" theme- chosen to commemorate the end of Kat's own roaring twenties. There were a couple of flapper dresses and Louise Brooks wigs, but the majority of the crowd was simply dressed up: girls in sequins, guys in blazers and jeans. They spilled out of the living room and onto the patio and garden surrounding the swimming pool; they clustered around the outdoor bar and the long table laden with finger foods: dumplings in bamboo steamer baskets, assorted sushi rolls, chicken satay made onsite by a hired cook- a wizened Malay man who'd brought his own mini grill and pandan-leaf fan.

I’ve tackled many challenges in my lifetime. The most satisfying ones were food related. Like the 2-pound burger at Fuddruckers that I had to devour in 15 minutes. Shattered it in 5 minutes and 46 seconds! Or the Blazing Challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings: eat 12 blazing wings in 5 minutes. Killed it in 57 seconds! Quaker Steak and Lube’s all-you-can- eat wings in one sitting? I may still hold the record in Madison, Wisconsin, for scarfing down 78. I’ll never forget when 6 linemen and I went to a sushi restaurant during the time of the 2011 Rose Bowl in Pasadena. We didn’t exactly take on an eating challenge, but we did get kicked out of the place when the owner ordered, “Go home now. You’ve eaten eight hundred dollars’ worth of sushi.

There are food stations around the room, each representing one of the main characters. The Black Widow station is all Russian themed, with a carved ice sculpture that delivers vodka into molded ice shot glasses, buckwheat blini with smoked salmon and caviar, borsht bite skewers, minipita sandwiches filled with grilled Russian sausages, onion salad, and a sour cream sauce. The Captain America station is, naturally, all-American, with cheeseburger sliders, miniwaffles topped with a fried chicken tender and drizzled with Tabasco honey butter, paper cones of French fries, mini-Chicago hot dogs, a mac 'n' cheese bar, and pickled watermelon skewers. The Hulk station is all about duality and green. Green and white tortellini, one filled with cheese, the other with spicy sausage, skewered with artichoke hearts with a brilliant green pesto for dipping. Flatbreads cooked with olive oil and herbs and Parmesan, topped with an arugula salad in a lemon vinaigrette. Mini-espresso cups filled with hot sweet pea soup topped with cold sour cream and chervil. And the dessert buffet is inspired by Loki, the villain of the piece, and Norse god of mischief. There are plenty of dessert options, many of the usual suspects, mini-creme brûlée, eight different cookies, small tarts. But here and there are mischievous and whimsical touches. Rice Krispies treats sprinkled with Pop Rocks for a shocking dining experience. One-bite brownies that have a molten chocolate center that explodes in the mouth. Rice pudding "sushi" topped with Swedish Fish.

I go to one of my favorite Instagram profiles, the.korean.vegan, and I watch her last video, in which she makes peach-topped tteok. The Korean vegan, Joanne, cooks while talking about various things in her life. As she splits open a peach, she explains why she gave up meat. As she adds lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, cinnamon, almond extract, maple syrup, then vegan butter and vegan milk and sifted almond and rice flour, she talks about how she worried about whitewashing her diet, about denying herself a fundamental part of her culture, and then about how others don't see her as authentically Korean since she is a vegan. I watch other videos by Joanne, soothed by her voice into feeling human myself, and into craving the experiences of love she talks of and the food she cooks as she does. I go to another profile, and watch a person's hands delicately handle little knots of shirataki noodles and wash them in cold water, before placing them in a clear oden soup that is already filled with stock-boiled eggs, daikon, and pure white triangles of hanpen. Next, they place a cube of rice cake in a little deep-fried tofu pouch, and seal the pouch with a toothpick so it looks like a tiny drawstring bag; they place the bag in with the other ingredients. "Every winter my mum made this dish for me," a voice says over the video, "just like how every winter my grandma made it for my mum when she was a child." The person in the video is half Japanese like me, and her name is Mei; she appears on the screen, rosy cheeked, chopsticks in her hand, and sits down with her dish and eats it, facing the camera. Food means so much in Japan. Soya beans thrown out of temples in February to tempt out demons before the coming of spring bring the eater prosperity and luck; sushi rolls eaten facing a specific direction decided each year bring luck and fortune to the eater; soba noodles consumed at New Year help time progress, connecting one year to the next; when the noodles snap, the eater can move on from bad events from the last year. In China too, long noodles consumed at New Year grant the eater a long life. In Korea, when rice-cake soup is eaten at New Year, every Korean ages a year, together, in unison. All these things feel crucial to East Asian identity, no matter which country you are from.

I keep to the light and look through the windows of restaurants and pubs. I climb up the stairs of a theater and see people inside standing around in little groups on a red carpet and talking. There are tall tables some stand around with bowls of sharing food on top---nuts and crisps and dips and olives. I keep walking, past an Italian bistro in which people are eating seafood pasta; in another restaurant, two people have a huge plate of oysters between them; a man and a woman are talking animatedly about something they have on their table---a thick wad of paper that has text on it and notes written in pen---while they share food in a Peruvian restaurant. "Have you tried the scallops?" someone says. "Have you had time to look at the menu?" says another person. Two women, all in black, with instrument cases, are sharing a bottle of wine outside. A waiter comes out with a platter of sushi.

But more than that, what's up with this rice?! It's mellow and mild, without the first hint of any vinegary tang! This isn't your normal sushi rice!" "Exactly! For this recipe, I used red vinegar. The vinegar used in sushi rice is typically rice vinegar made from a blend of rice and wheat or corn that is fermented. But red vinegar is made from fermented sake lees! By the time Edomae sushi- sushi as we know it today- first became popular in the 1820s, red vinegar was already a condiment... But since the brewing and aging process can take up to five or six years, it has become a luxury vinegar in the present day Isn't that right, Senpai?!" "You are correct!" Oh, I get it! Because of how it's made, red vinegar has less sugar and a mellower flavor! Plus, mixing it with rice won't make the rice as tough, leaving the finished sushi rice soft and fluffy! But that also makes balancing the flavors of the sushi rice and its toppings a much more delicate task.

Hiro and Y.T. have eaten a lot of junk food together in different joints all over L.A. -- doughnuts, burritos, pizza, sushi, you name it -- and all Y.T. ever talks about is her mother and the terrible job that she has with the Feds. The regimentation. The lie-detector tests. The fact that for all the work she does, she really has no idea what it is that the government is really working on. It's always been a mystery to Hiro, too, but then, that's how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn't bother with, which means that there's probably no reason for it; you never know what they're doing or why. Hackers have traditionally looked upon the government's coding sweatshops with horror and just tried to forget that all of that shit ever existed. But they have thousands of programmers. The programmers work twelve hours a day out of some twisted sense of personal loyalty. Their software-engineering techniques, while cruel and ugly, are very sophisticated. They must have been up to something.

I found Chinatown both impossibly sophisticated and unbearably out of vogue. Chinese restaurants were a guilty pleasure of mine. I loved how they evoked the living world- either the Walden-like sense of individualism of the Ocean or Happy Garden, or something more candid ("Yummies!"). Back home they had been a preserve of birthdays and special celebrations: a lazy Susan packed with ribs and Peking duck, rhapsodically spun to the sound of Fleetwood Mac or the Police, with banana fritters drenched in syrup and a round of flowering tea to finish. It felt as cosmopolitan a dining experience as I would ever encounter. Contextualized amid the big-city landscape of politicized microbreweries and sushi, a hearty table of MSG and marinated pork felt at best crass, at worst obscurely racist. But there was something about the gloop and the sugar that I couldn't resist. And Chinatown was peculiarly untouched by my contemporaries, so I could happily nibble at plates of salt and chili squid or crispy Szechuan beef while leafing through pages of a magazine in peace.

Other than chicken and rice, you'll find Tokyo restaurants specializing in fried pork cutlets, curry rice, ramen, udon, soba, gyōza, beef tongue, tempura, takoyaki, yakitori, Korean-style grilled beef, sushi, okonomiyaki, mixed rice dishes, fried chicken, and dozens of other dishes. Furthermore, even if you know something about Japanese food, it's common to come across a restaurant whose menu or plastic food display indicates that it specializes in a particular food you've never seen before and can't quite decipher. Out of this tradition of single-purpose restaurants, Japan has created homegrown fast-food chains. McDonald's and KFC exist in Tokyo but are outnumbered by Japanese chains like Yoshinoya (beef-and-rice bowl), CoCo Ichiban (curry rice), Hanamaru Udon, Gindaco (takoyaki), Lotteria (burgers), Tenya (tempura), Freshness Burger, Ringer Hut (Nagasaki-style noodles), and Mister Donut (pizza) (just kidding). Since the Japanese are generally slim and healthy and I don't know how to read a Japanese newspaper, it was unclear to me whether Japan's fast-food chains are blamed for every social ill, but it seems like it would be hard to pin a high suicide rate on Mister Donut.

The salmon is perfectly cooked. The trace amounts of sugar contained in the wheat flour have combined with the butter in a chemical reaction that's creating a wonderful fragrance. It was all fried together for precisely the right amount of time to create a superb Meunière." "The squid liver was quickly sautéed in a dollop of butter as well, taking a bite of that with the Meunière is sublime! The butter's flavor gently wraps around the salty and pleasantly bitter taste of the liver, giving it a beautifully mellow body." "He added pomegranate seeds and tonburi to the soy sauce marinated roe! Those three completely disparate flavors meld into a seamless whole thanks to butter! Not only does it have an amusing texture, the roe doesn't have its typical greasiness either!" *Tonburi, also called land caviar, is the seeds of the summer cypress plant. It's texture is similar to caviar.* He's used mounds of butter in so many different facets of the dish, but it somehow hasn't made the flavor heavy at all. The secret to that lies in the bed of special sushi rice hidden underneath the seafood! "This sushi rice was made not with vinegar but with orange juice and lemon juice!" "So that's why he was squeezing that mountain of oranges!"

It's a parade of flawless tuna deliciousness! But by far, the most dangerous piece... is the one that looks like a bomb of pure tuna goodness, the straw-grilled, seared noten sushi! The noten- a cut of meat from the top of the tuna's head- is one of the priciest cuts. Extravagantly fatty, its richness melds with the fragrant searing into a powerful duo! Yet there isn't the first hint of fishiness! Searing it using aromatic straw burned it away, leaving only pure savory flavor behind to please both nose and palate!" "His Trace was dead-on. Looks like it really will be his arrangements on that Gunkan Maki that decide this card." "I can't even begin to guess what it tastes like." What's this on top of the minced tuna and leeks?! Is it... meringue?! "Aah! Now I see! I know what Subaru Mimasaka took out at that moment! It was the same smoked soy sauce he passed to Kuga!" The mellow, full-bodied aroma of smoked soy sauce has seeped into every crevice of the minced tuna... ... while the differing textures of the meringue and the negitoro create deeper, more complex layers to the flavor! If I were to name it, I would call it the "Ultimate Negitoro Eggs-over-Rice Gunkan Sushi"! Minced tuna rib meat mixed with leeks and smoked soy sauce, topped with quail-egg yolk

The clearest signs of Hakodate's current greatness, though, can be found clustered around its central train station, in the morning market, where blocks and blocks of pristine seafood explode onto the sidewalks like an edible aquarium, showcasing the might of the Japanese fishing industry. Hokkaido is ground zero for the world's high-end sushi culture. The cold waters off the island have long been home to Japan's A-list of seafood: hairy crab, salmon, scallops, squid, and, of course, uni. The word "Hokkaido" attached to any of these creatures commands a premium at market, one that the finest sushi chefs around the world are all too happy to pay. Most of the Hokkaido haul is shipped off to the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, where it's auctioned and scattered piece by piece around Japan and the big cities of the world. But the island keeps a small portion of the good stuff for itself, most of which seems to be concentrated in a two-hundred-meter stretch in Hakodate. Everything here glistens with that sparkly sea essence, and nearly everything is meant to be consumed in the moment. Live sea urchins, piled high in hillocks of purple spikes, are split with scissors and scraped out raw with chopsticks. Scallops are blowtorched in their shells until their edges char and their sweet liquor concentrates. Somewhere, surely, a young fishmonger will spoon salmon roe directly into your mouth for the right price.

What luxury ingredient will it be this year? Matsutake mushrooms? "Returning" Skipjack? Fresh soba?" "IT'S MACKEREL PIKE!" "Really? Pike?!" "Umm... that's kind of a letdown, to be honest. They're such common fish..." "Not so fast, folks. It is true that throughout Japanese history, pike was viewed as a common fish that only the peasantry ate. But recently, high-class restaurants have begun serving it... ... and it now appears on the menus of restaurants across the world. It has become an unspoken representative of the Fall Fishing Season. A dish that uses pike in some way... ... is the theme for the final round of this year's Fall Classic!" "Mmm, pike! The first thing that springs to mind is yummy salt-grilled pike! The crispy skin... the hot, succulent meat... the savory smell of its juices... A dollop of grated daikon radish on top, and it's yum, yum, yum!" "It's been showing up on sushi menus recently too. That's a general ingredient for you. You can do tons of stuff with it." "As you all know, pike can be used in a wide variety of dishes. But strangely enough, this one ingredient... ... has connections to all three of our contestants. A pike.. ... with its fatty meat is known for its robust fragrance. It is a prized ingredient in seafood dishes across the world. And it has a long history of use in what is viewed as common cuisine!" "Oho! It has facets that appeal to all three chefs." "That means it's an ingredient that can play to each of their strengths!

The hot case at a kombini features tonkatsu, fried chicken, menchikatsu (a breaded hamburger patty), Chinese pork buns, potato croquettes, and seafood items such as breaded squid legs or oysters. In a bit of international solidarity, you'll see corn dogs, often labeled "Amerikandoggu." One day for lunch I stopped at 7-Eleven and brought home a pouch of "Gold Label" beef curry, steamed rice, inarizushi (sushi rice in a pouch of sweetened fried tofu), cold noodle salad, and a banana. Putting together lunch for the whole family from an American 7-Eleven would be as appetizing as scavenging among seaside medical waste, but this fun to shop for and fun to eat. Instant ramen is as popular in Japan as it is in college dorms worldwide, and while the selection of flavors is wider than at an American grocery, it serves a predictable ecological niche as the food of last resort for those with no money or no time. (Frozen ramen, on the other hand, can be very good; if you have access to a Japanese supermarket, look for Myojo Chukazanmai brand.) That's how I saw it, at least, until stumbling on the ramen topping section in the 7-Eleven refrigerator case, where you can buy shrink-wrapped packets of popular fresh ramen toppings such as braised pork belly and fermented bamboo shoots. With a quick stop at a convenience store, you can turn instant ramen into a serious meal. The pork belly is rolled and tied, braised, chilled, and then sliced into thick circular slices like Italian pancetta. This is one of the best things you can do with pork, and I don't say that lightly.

Fish at breakfast is sometimes himono (semi-dried fish, intensely flavored and chewy, the Japanese equivalent of a breakfast of kippered herring or smoked salmon) and sometimes a small fillet of rich, well-salted broiled fish. Japanese cooks are expert at cutting and preparing fish with nothing but salt and high heat to produce deep flavor and a variety of textures: a little crispy over here, melting and juicy there. Some of this is technique and some is the result of a turbo-charged supply chain that scoops small, flavorful fish out of the ocean and deposits them on breakfast tables with only the briefest pause at Tsukiji fish market and a salt cure in the kitchen. By now, I've finished my fish and am drinking miso soup. Where you find a bowl of rice, miso shiru is likely lurking somewhere nearby. It is most often just like the soup you've had at the beginning of a sushi meal in the West, with wakame seaweed and bits of tofu, but Iris and I were always excited when our soup bowls were filled with the shells of tiny shijimi clams. Clams and miso are one of those predestined culinary combos- what clams and chorizo are to Spain, clams and miso are to Japan. Shijimi clams are fingernail-sized, and they are eaten for the briny essence they release into the broth, not for what Mario Batali has called "the little bit of snot" in the shell. Miso-clam broth is among the most complex soup bases you'll ever taste, but it comes together in minutes, not the hours of simmering and skimming involved in making European stocks. As Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat explain in their book Japanese Hot Pots, this is because so many fermented Japanese ingredients are, in a sense, already "cooked" through beneficial bacterial and fungal actions. Japanese food has a reputation for crossing the line from subtlety into blandness, but a good miso-clam soup is an umami bomb that begins with dashi made from kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes) or niboshi (a school of tiny dried sardines), adds rich miso pressed through a strainer for smoothness, and is then enriched with the salty clam essence.

The tofu pocket is soaked with butter, every bite of it drenching the lips... ... sending rich waves gushing through the mouth. Just one taste is enough to seep both tongue and mind in a thick flood of butter! "The tofu pocket is so juicy it's nearly dripping, yet it hasn't drowned the filling at all. The rice is delectably fluffy and delicate, done in true pilaf style, with the grains separate, tender and not remotely sticky. Simmered in fragrant chicken broth, the prawns give it a delightful crunch, while ample salt and pepper boost both its flavor and aroma!" "The whole dish is strongly flavored, but it isn't the least bit heavy or sticky. The deliciousness of every ingredient, wrapped in a cloak of rich butter, wells up with each bite like a gushing, savory spring! How on earth did you manage to create this powerful a flavor?!" "Well, first I sautéed the rice for the pilaf without washing it- one of the major rules of pilafs! If you wash all the starch off the rice, the grains get crumbly and the whole thing can wind up tasting tacky instead of tender. Then I thoroughly rinsed the tofu pockets with hot water to wash off the extra oil so they'd soak up the seasonings better. But the biggest secret to the whole thing... ... was my specially made Mochi White Sauce! Normal white sauce is made with lots of milk, butter and flour, making it really thick and heavy. But I made mine using only soy milk and mochi, so it's still rich and creamy without the slightest hint of greasiness. In addition, I sprinkled a blend of several cheeses on top of everything when I put it in the oven to toast. They added some nice hints of mellow saltiness to the dish without making it too heavy! Basically, I shoved all the tasty things I could think of into my dish... ... pushing the rich, savory flavor as hard as I could until it was just shy of too much... and this is the result!" Some ingredients meld with the butter's richness into mellow deliciousness... ... while others, sautéed in butter, have become beautifully savory and aromatic. Into each of these little inari sushi pockets has gone an immense amount of work across uncountable steps and stages. Undaunted by Mr. Saito's brilliant dish, gleaming with the fierce goodness of seafood... each individual ingredient is loudly and proudly declaring its own unique deliciousness!

Well then, first would be the abalone and sea urchin- the bounty of the sea! Ah, I see! This foam on top is kombu seaweed broth that's been whipped into a mousse!" "Mm! I can taste the delicate umami flavors seeping into my tongue!" "The fish meat was aged for a day wrapped in kombu. The seaweed pulls just enough of the moisture out of the meat, allowing it to keep longer, a perfect technique for a bento that needs to last. Hm! Next looks to be bonito. ...!" What rich, powerful umami!" Aha! This is the result of several umami components melding together. The glutamic acid in the kombu from the previous piece is mixing together in my mouth with the inosinic acid in the bonito! "And, like, I cold aged this bonito across two days. Aging fish and meats boosts their umami components, y'know. In other words, the true effect of this bento comes together in your mouth... as you eat it in order from one end to the other." "Next is a row... that looks to be made entirely from vegetables. But none of them use a single scrap of seaweed. The wrappers around each one are different vegetables sliced paper-thin!" "Right! This bento totally doesn't go for any heavy foods." "Next comes the sushi row that practically cries out that it's a main dish... raw cold-aged beef sushi!" Th-there it is again! The powerful punch of umami flavor as two components mix together in my mouth! "Hm? Wait a minute. I understand the inosinic acid comes from the beef... but where is the glutamic acid?" "From the tomatoes." "Tomatoes? But I don't see any..." "They're in there. See, I first put them in a centrifuge. That broke them down into their component parts- the coloring, the fiber, and the jus. I then filtered the jus to purify it even further. Then I put just a few drops on each piece of veggie sushi." "WHAT THE HECK?!" "She took an ingredient and broke it down so far it wasn't even recognizable anymore? Can she even do that?" Appliances like the centrifuge and cryogenic grinder are tools that were first developed to be used in medicine, not cooking. Even among pro chefs, only a handful are skilled enough to make regular use of such complex machines! Who would have thought a high school student was capable of mastering them to this degree! "And last but not least we have this one. It's sea bream with some sort of pink jelly... ... resting on top of a Chinese spoon." That pink jelly was a pearl of condensed soup stock! Once it popped inside my mouth... ... it mixed together with the sea bream sushi until it tasted like- "Sea bream chazuke!

The village square teemed with life, swirling with vibrant colors and boisterous chatter. The entire village had gathered, celebrating the return of their ancestral spirit. Laughter and music filled the air, carrying with it an energy that made Kitsune smile. Paper lanterns of all colors floated lazily above, their delicate glow reflecting on the smiling faces below. Cherry blossoms caught in the playful breeze, their sweet, earthy scent settling over the scene. At the center, villagers danced with unbridled joy, the rhythm of the taiko drums and the melody of flutes guiding their steps. To the side, a large table groaned under the weight of a feast. Sticky rice balls, steamed dumplings, seaweed soup, sushi, and more filled the air with a mouthwatering aroma. As she approached the table, she was greeted warmly by the villagers, who offered her food, their smiles genuine and welcoming. She filled a plate and sat at a table with Goro and Sota, overlooking the celebration. The event brought back a flood of memories of a similar celebration from her childhood—a time when everything was much simpler and she could easily answer the question who are you? The memory filled her heart with a sweet sadness, a reminder of what she lost and what had carved the road to where she was now. Her gaze fell on the dancing villagers, but she wasn’t watching them. Not really. Her attention was fully embedded in her heart ache, longing for the past, for the life that was so cruelly ripped away from her. “I think... I think I might know how to answer your question,” she finally said, her voice soft and steady, barely audible over the cacophony of festivity around them. “Oh?” Goro responded, his face alight with intrigue. “I would have to tell you my story.” Kitsune’s eyes reflected the somber clouds of her past. Goro swallowed his bite of food before nodding. “Let us retire to the dojo, and you can tell me.” They retreated from the bustling square, leaving behind the chaos of the celebration. The sounds of laughter and chatter and drums carried away by distance. The dojo, with its bamboo and sturdy jungle planks, was bathed in the soft luminescence of the moonlight, the surface of its wooden architecture glistening faintly under the glow. They stepped into the silent tranquility of the building, and Kitsune made her way to the center, the smooth, cool touch of the polished wooden floor beneath her providing a sense of peace. Assuming the lotus position, she calmed herself, ready to speak of memories she hadn’t confronted in a long time. Not in any meaningful way at least. Across from her, Goro settled, his gaze intense yet patient, encouraging her with a gentle smile like he somehow already understood her story was hard to verbalize.

In the meantime, I tried my best to acclimate to my new life in the middle of nowhere. I had to get used to the fact that I lived twenty miles from the nearest grocery store. That I couldn’t just run next door when I ran out of eggs. That there was no such thing as sushi. Not that it would matter, anyway. No cowboy on the ranch would touch it. That’s bait, they’d say, laughing at any city person who would convince themselves that such a food was tasty. And the trash truck: there wasn’t one. In this strange new land, there was no infrastructure for dealing with trash. There were cows in my yard, and they pooped everywhere--on the porch, in the yard, even on my car if they happened to be walking near it when they dropped a load. There wasn’t a yard crew to clean it up. I wanted to hire people, but there were no people. The reality of my situation grew more crystal clear every day. One morning, after I choked down a bowl of cereal, I looked outside the window and saw a mountain lion siting on the hood of my car, licking his paws--likely, I imagined, after tearing a neighboring rancher’s wife from limb to limb and eating her for breakfast. I darted to the phone and called Marlboro Man, telling him there was a mountain lion sitting on my car. My heart beat inside my chest. I had no idea mountain lions were indigenous to the area. “It’s probably just a bobcat,” Marlboro Man reassured me. I didn’t believe him. “No way--it’s huge,” I cried. “It’s seriously got to be a mountain lion!” “I’ve gotta go,” he said. Cows mooed in the background. I hung up the phone, incredulous at Marlboro Man’s lack of concern, and banged on the window with the palm of my hand, hoping to scare the wild cat away. But it only looked up and stared at me through the window, imagining me on a plate with a side of pureed trout. My courtship with Marlboro Man, filled with fizzy romance, hadn’t prepared me for any of this; not the mice I heard scratching in the wall next to my bed, not the flat tires I got from driving my car up and down the jagged gravel roads. Before I got married, I didn’t know how to use a jack or a crowbar…and I didn’t want to have to learn now. I didn’t want to know that the smell in the laundry room was a dead rodent. I’d never smelled a dead rodent in my life: why, when I was supposed to be a young, euphoric newlywed, was I being forced to smell one now? During the day, I was cranky. At night, I was a mess. I hadn’t slept through the night once since we returned from our honeymoon. Besides the nausea, whose second evil wave typically hit right at bedtime, I was downright spooked. As I lay next to Marlboro Man, who slept like a baby every night, I thought of monsters and serial killers: Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. In the utter silence of the country, every tiny sound was amplified; I was certain if I let myself go to sleep, the murderer outside our window would get me.

Meanwhile, at a Tokyo 7-Eleven, someone right now is choosing from a variety of bento boxes and rice bowls, delivered that morning and featuring grilled fish, sushi, mapo tofu, tonkatsu, and a dozen other choices. The lunch philosophy at Japanese 7-Eleven? Actual food. On the day we missed out on fresh soba, Iris had a tonkatsu bento, and I chose a couple of rice balls (onigiri), one filled with pickled plum and the other with spicy fish roe. For $1.50, convenience store onigiri encapsulate everything that is great about Japanese food and packaging. Let's start in the middle and work outward, like were building an onion. The core of an onigiri features a flavorful and usually salty filling. This could be an umeboshi (pickled apricot, but usually translated as pickled plum), as sour as a Sour Patch Kid; flaked salmon; or cod or mullet roe. Next is the rice, packed lightly by machine into a perfect triangle. Japanese rice is unusual among staple rices in Asia because it's good at room temperature or a little colder. Sushi or onigiri made with long-grain rice would be a chalky, crumbly disaster. Oishinbo argues that Japan is the only country in Asia that makes rice balls because of the unique properties of Japanese rice. I doubt this. Medium- and short-grain rices are also popular in parts of southern China, and presumably wherever those rices exist, people squish them into a ball to eat later, kind of like I used to do with a fistful of crustless white bread. (Come on, I can't be the only one.) Next comes a layer of cellophane, followed by a layer of nori and another layer of cellophane. The nori is preserved in a transparent shell for the same reason Han Solo was encased in carbonite: to ensure that he would remain crispy until just before eating. (At least, I assume that's what Jabba the Hutt had in mind.) You pull a red strip on the onigiri packaging, both layers of cellophane part, and a ready-to-eat rice ball tumbles into your hand, encased in crispy seaweed. Not everybody finds the convenience store onigiri packaging to be a triumph. "The seaweed isn't just supposed to be crunchy," says Futaki in Oishinbo: The Joy of Rice. "It tastes best when the seaweed gets moist and comes together as one with the rice." Yamaoka agrees. Jerk. Luckily, you'll find a few moist-nori rice balls right next to the crispy ones.

Before heading to our respective baths, Laurie, Iris, and I went to the food court and got lunch. I loved this food court, not because the food was especially good (although it was seventeen times better than the average American food court) but because it was such a perfect microcosm of the Japanese dining landscape. There were three noodle stands (udon, soba, and ramen), a sushi stand, a dessert shop selling soft-serve sundaes with fruit jelly and mochi dumplings, and a Korean stand specializing in rice dishes. I went straight for the Korean place and got myself a dolsot bibimbap, a hot stone bowl of rice topped with beef, assorted vegetables, and Korean hot sauce. Laurie and Iris returned with ramen and gyōza, and we sat together in the main hall in our yukata.

While I struggled with the menu, a handsome middle-aged guy from a nearby table came over to help. "You like sashimi? Cooked fish? Sushi?" he asked. His English was excellent. He was originally from Okinawa, he said, and a member of Rotary International. I know nothing about the Rotarians except that it's a service organization; helping befuddled foreigners order food in bars must fall within its definition of charitable service. Our service-oriented neighbor helped us order pressed sweetfish sushi, kisu fish tempura, and butter-sauteed scallops. Dredging up a vague Oishinbo memory, I also ordered broiled sweetfish, a seasonal delicacy said to taste vaguely of melon. While we started in on our sushi, our waitress- the kind of harried diner waitress who would call customers "hon" in an American restaurant- delivered a huge, beautiful steamed flounder with soy sauce, mirin, and chunks of creamy tofu. "From that guy," she said, indicating the Rotarian samaritan. We retaliated with a large bottle of beer for him and his friend (the friend came over to thank us, with much bowing). What would happen at your neighborhood bar if a couple of confused foreigners came in with a child and didn't even know how to order a drink? Would someone send them a free fish? I should add that it's not exactly common to bring children to an izakaya, but it's not frowned upon, either; also, not every izakaya is equally welcoming. Some, I have heard, are more clubby and are skeptical of nonregulars, whatever their nationality. But I didn't encounter any places like that. Oh, how was the food? So much of the seafood we eat in the U.S., even in Seattle, is previously frozen, slightly past its prime, or both. All of the seafood at our local izakaya was jump-up-and-bite-you fresh. This was most obvious in the flounder and the scallops. A mild fish, steamed, lightly seasoned, and served with tofu does not sound like a recipe for memorable eating, but it was. The butter-sauteed scallops, meanwhile, would have been at home at a New England seaside shack. They were served with a lettuce and tomato salad and a dollop of mayo. The shellfish were cooked and seasoned perfectly. I've never had a better scallop.

So. Food? My treat.” I touched my belly. It wasn’t exactly full, and neither was my wallet. I hoped my mom would take five minutes out of her prewedding bliss to remember to run payroll on time. “I don’t know. That yogurt really filled me up.” “Oh, bull. You totally had asparagus envy.” He had me there. “Sushi in the food court?” I could roll with that.

...you should’ve seen me ready to shiv security for making me take my ring off earlier.” I frowned as I accidently lost control of my chopsticks, my California roll dropping into the little plastic cup of soy sauce. “See?Sounds like classic Bridezilla behavior to me.” She almost choked on her wasabi-laced sushi piece. “Bridezilla? I am the least likely person to turn Bridezilla you will ever meet. In fact, I am like the Mothra of the Bridezilla world.” “Mothra.” I tsked. “Pedestrian. Destoroyah—no, Bridestoroyah—could totally take on Bridezilla.” “You have the chopstick skill level of a preschooler, and you dare to go around citing Japanese monster movie characters to me?” Laney seethed. “I have my reasons for choosing Mothra.” “Yeah?” I stabbed my chopsticks straight through the middle of my errant sushi piece. “Let’s hear them.” “Don’t, it’s bad luck!” she exclaimed. “What, to talk to a bride about her wedding dress before the big day?” And I thought Sloane was taking the wedding superstitions too far. “No, to stab your chopstick through the middle of your food.” She reached across the table and readjusted my sticks for me with one hand. I noticed she kept her other hand on the garment bag riding shotgun in the chair next to her. Its midnight blue sheen and fancy silver embroidery looked out of place in the middle of the airport food court.

With six thousand miles separating me from sleep, I stumbled down into the subway at dawn and emerged on the outskirts of the Tsukiji market just as the sun broke across Tokyo Bay. Inside the market, I saw the entire ocean on display: swollen-bellied salmon, dark disks of abalone, vast armies of exotic crustaceans, conger eels so shiny and new they looked to be napping in their Styrofoam boxes. I stumbled onward to a tuna auction, where a man in a trader's cap worked his way through a hundred silver carcasses scattered across the cement floor, using a system of rapid hand motions and guttural noises unintelligible to all but a select group of tuna savants. When the auction ended, I followed one of the bodies back to its buyer's stall, where a man and his son used band saw, katana blade, cleaver, and fillet knife to work the massive fish down into sellable components: sinewy tail meat for the cheap izakaya, ruby loins for hotel restaurants, blocks of marbled belly for the high-end sushi temples. By 8:00 a.m. I was starving. First, a sushi feast, a twelve-piece procession of Tsukiji's finest- fat-frizzled bluefin, chewy surf clam, a custardy slab of Hokkaido uni- washed down with frosty glasses of Kirin. Then a bowl of warm soba from the outer market, crowned at the last second with a golden nest of vegetable tempura.

The real game, as I soon discover, is donburi. Donburi, often shortened to don, means "bowl," and the name encapsulates a vast array of rice bowls topped with delicious stuff: oyakodon (chicken and egg), unadon (grilled eel), tendon (tempura). As nice as meat and tempura and eel can be, the donburi of yours and mine and every sensible person's dreams is topped with a rainbow bounty of raw fish. Warm rice, cool fish, a dab of wasabi, a splash of soy- sushi, without the pageantry and without the price tag. At Kikuyo Shokudo Honten you will find more than three dozen varieties of seafood dons, including a kaleidoscopic combination of uni, salmon, ikura (salmon roe), quail eggs, and avocado. I opt for what I've come to call the Hokkaido Superhero's Special: scallops, salmon roe, hairy crab, and uni. It's ridiculous hyperbole to call a simple plate of food life changing, but as the tiny briny eggs pop and the sweet scallops dissolve and the uni melts like ocean Velveeta, I feel some tectonic shift taking place just below my surface.

I entered the open door of Jerry’s office at the Chicago Crier. “Hey, kid.” He removed his bifocals and stood up from behind his desk. “What do you say we get sandwiches and hit up Millennium Park?” “It’s freezing out.” “All right. Shedd Aquarium, then?” Clearly, Jerry needed a distraction, which wasn’t usually hard for him. Maybe he knew I needed one, too. “That sounds good.” “Should we pick up sushi and freak out all the animals?” “No, that’s terrible.” He was such a kid at heart, albeit a weird one, but a kid through and through. “Let’s get grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup from Ma’s.” “Comfort food it is.

In the meantime, I tried my best to acclimate to my new life in the middle of nowhere. I had to get used to the fact that I lived twenty miles from the nearest grocery store. That I couldn’t just run next door when I ran out of eggs. That there was no such thing as sushi. Not that it would matter, anyway. No cowboy on the ranch would touch it. That’s bait, they’d say, laughing at any city person who would convince themselves that such a food was tasty. And the trash truck: there wasn’t one. In this strange new land, there was no infrastructure for dealing with trash. There were cows in my yard, and they pooped everywhere--on the porch, in the yard, even on my car if they happened to be walking near it when they dropped a load. There wasn’t a yard crew to clean it up. I wanted to hire people, but there were no people. The reality of my situation grew more crystal clear every day.

Within a decade, both individual identification and food provisioning were adopted at Western field sites, from Gombe Stream to Cayo Santiago. And even though the second part of the method has fallen out of favor, the first remains firmly embedded. The concept of the individual in its society amounts to a momentous theoretical contribution by Japanese primatology to the study of social animals. The ideas that individuals matter, that their identities are linked to their place in the whole, that they need to be followed over time, and that human empathy helps us understand them, are so obviously correct that armies of scientists now apply this perspective, often without knowing where it came from.

Rescue dogs are trained to perform such responses on command, often in repulsive situations, such as fires, that they would normally avoid unless the entrapped individuals are familiar. Training is accomplished with the usual carrot-and stick method. One might think, therefore, that the dogs perform like Skinnerian rats, doing what has been reinforced in the past, partly out of instinct, partly out of a desire for tidbits. If they save human lives, one could argue, they do so for purely selfish reasons. The image of the rescue dog as a well-behaved robot is hard to maintain, however, in the face of their attitude under trying circumstances with few survivors, such as in the aftermath of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When rescue dogs encounter too many dead people, they lose interest in their job regardless of how much praise and goodies they get. This was discovered by Caroline Hebard, the U.S. pioneer of canine search and rescue, during the Mexico City earthquake of 1985. Hebard recounts how her German shepherd, Aly, reacted to finding corpse after corpse and few survivors. Aly would be all excited and joyful if he detected human life in the rubble, but became depressed by all the death. In Hebard's words, Aly regarded humans as his friends, and he could not stand to be surrounded by so many dead friends: "Aly fervently wanted his stick reward, and equally wanted to please Caroline, but as long as he was uncertain about whether he had found someone alive, he would not even reward himself. Here in this gray area, rules of logic no longer applied." The logic referred to is that a reward is just a reward: there is no reason for a trained dog to care about the victim's condition. Yet, all dogs on the team became depressed. They required longer and longer resting periods, and their eagerness for the job dropped off dramatically. After a couple of days, Aly clearly had had enough. His big brown eyes were mournful, and he hid behind the bed when Hehard wanted to take him out again. He also refused to eat. All other dogs on the team had lost their appetites as well. The solution to this motivational problem says a lot about what the dogs wanted. A Mexican veterinarian was invited to act as stand-in survivor. The rescuers hid the volunteer somewhere in a wreckage and let the dogs find him. One after another the dogs were sent in, picked up the man's scent, and happily alerted, thus "saving" his life. Refreshed by this exercise, the dogs were ready to work again. What this means is that trained dogs rescue people only partly for approval and food rewards. Instead of performing a cheap circus trick, they are emotionally invested. They relish the opportunity to find and save a live person. Doing so also constitutes some sort of reward, but one more in line with what Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and father of economics, thought to underlie human sympathy: all that we derive from sympathy, he said, is the pleasure of seeing someone else's fortune. Perhaps this doesn't seem like much, but it means a lot to many people, and apparently also to some bighearted canines.

The other major domain of cultural learning is food. Animals learn from each other what to eat, and what not. Parent crows that fly daily with their offspring to the local garbage dump to look for tasty morsels instill in them a life-long preference for such sites, whereas the crow family that survives on natural foods will have offspring that carry on the same tradition when they get older. Food aversion is similarly transmitted. This was first noticed by a German rodent-control officer who set out poisoned bait, killing wild rats in large numbers. After a while, however, the remaining rats began to avoid the bait, and their offspring would do the same. Without any direct experience with the bait, young rats would eat only safe foods. An experimental psychologist, Bennett Galef, tested this in his laboratory by feeding rats two diets of different texture, taste, and smell. He then laced one of the diets with lithium chloride, which makes rats sick. This procedure led the animals to avoid the contaminated diet. The question now was how the rats' offspring would react after removal of the contamination. Both diets were again perfectly okay to eat, but adults fed exclusively on only one diet due to their bad experience with the other. It turned out that the pups acted like their parents. Of 240 pups given a choice of both diets, only one ate any of the food that adults in its colony had learned to avoid.

For the biologist, the way habits are transmitted is secondary. All we care about is whether the process is "visible" to natural selection. That is, does learning from others contribute to survival? As illustrated by the examples of alarm calling, food aversion, and snake fear, there is every reason to believe that, yes, information gained from others plays a major role in the struggle for existence. Rehabilitation programs, in which home-reared apes have been released into the wild, have taught us how critical it is for these animals to know what to eat, where to go, and what to avoid. Having grown up in the absence of adult models of their species, young apes are rarely successful in the forest, often starving to death. In this sense, apes are as culturally reliant as we are.

So adding vinegar to potato salad or to rice (like the Japanese do to make sushi rice) or dipping bread in balsamic vinegar may blunt the effects of these high-glycemic foods.

The recommended daily intake of iodine is 150 mcg, which is what is in about two sheets of nori,31 the seaweed that’s used to make sushi. There are all sorts of seaweed snacks on the market now, but most, if not all of them, seem to have added red-light ingredients. So I buy plain nori and season the sheets myself by brushing them with jarred pickled ginger juice and lightly sprinkling on wasabi powder before recrisping them at 300°F for about five minutes. Sprinkling just a half teaspoon of the seaweeds arame or dulse onto dishes you’re preparing may also get you your iodine for the day. Dulse is sold as pretty purple flakes you can just shake onto your food. I do caution against hijiki32 (also spelled hiziki), because it has been found to be contaminated with arsenic. I also caution against kelp, which may have too much iodine; just a half teaspoon of kelp could exceed the daily upper limit. For the same reason, you shouldn’t get into a regular habit of eating more than fifteen sheets of nori or more than a tablespoon of arame or dulse a day.33 Too much iodine can cause excessive thyroid gland activity.34

people waiting for fresh carne asada or the millions of food trucks selling everything from sushi burritos to Korean barbecue. Los Angeles is all about layers, and middle-of-the-night Hollywood is one from the deep interior, all the for-show stripped away, displaying only what’s at its core, what’s usually hidden under all the tourism and partying and beauty and wealth. In the middle of the night, everyone is gone except the residents of tent cities, the people whose habits keep them up all night, the sex workers searching for stragglers from the bars, and the cops like vultures circling for carrion.

Ruibe is a traditional Hokkaido dish using salmon or trout. It uses frozen salmon, thinly cut into sashimi slices. The fish is not thawed, but eaten frozen with soy sauce and wasabi. The origin of the name for ruibe is from the Ainu word ruipe in which ru means "melt" and ipe means "food.

The filling for the rice ball is the wasabi leaves and stem marinated overnight in soy sauce. You make that into a rice ball using sushi rice... ... and wrap dried seaweed around it to create a rice ball the size of a ping-pong ball. Meanwhile, you create a barazushi. Ingredients like grilled saltwater eel with sauce, kohada marinated in vinegar, kanpyo, steamed shrimp, steamed abalone and others... ...are all chopped up... ...and mixed into the rice. Then use the small rice ball you made beforehand as the next filling... ... to create a larger rice ball. And then you coat it with thin strips of grilled egg.

In the bottom right is the grilled fish of the day--- in this case, teriyaki yellowtail. Top left is a selection of sashimi and pickled dishes.: Akashi sea bream, Kishu tuna, and flash-grilled Karatsu abalone. Seared Miyajima conger eel, served with pickled cucumber and myoga ginger. And in the bottom left is the matsutake rice--- the mushrooms are from Shinshu, and wonderfully fragrant. I'll bring some soup over shortly. In the meantime, enjoy!' Nagare bowed and turned back to the kitchen. 'Let's tuck in,' said Tae, joining her hands together in appreciation before reaching for her chopsticks. 'It's delicious,' said Nobuko, who had already reached into the bento and sampled the sea bream. 'The sashimi looks wonderful, but these appetizers are simply exquisite. Let's see... rolled barracuda sushi, dash-maki omelette, and those look like quail tsukume balls. And this simmered octopus--- it just melts on your tongue!

Starting from the top left: thinly sliced Akashi sea bream sashimi, with a prickly ash bud and miso dressing-- to be enjoyed with the ponzu dipping sauce. Miso-glazed Kamo aubergine. Maizuru cockles sandwiched between slices of myoga ginger. Gizzard shad marinated in sweet vinegar, served in a miniature sushi roll. Fried matsutake, conger eel grilled two ways, Manganji sweet pepper tempura, abalone pickled in Kyoto-style sweet white miso and then grilled. Fish paste noodles, Kurama-style local chicken, smoked mackerel with a pine nut stuffing. Fresh soy milk curd and vegetables pickled with red perilla.

First, the sashimi: soy-marinated tuna with a wasabi dressing, fresh slices of yuba, and thin-sliced sea bream smeared with sesame-seed paste. Dashi-maki omelet; miniature tilefish sushi; boiled hon-shimeji mushrooms and mizuna leaves in a bonito flake and soy sauce dressing; and pickled turnip cut into chrysanthemum flowers. These skewers are quail balls, steamed prawn, and salted smashed cucumber.

Viewed from the aisles of a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, plummeting nutritional diversity might seem like an overblown threat. We live in a time, after all, when you can find calzone in Tokyo, fajitas in Rome, and sushi in the Mall of America, and when high-end supermarkets stock organic beef, micro brews, heirloom tomatoes, kale, matcha smoothies, and once-exotic cereals like quinoa, amaranth, and spelt. But this apparent embarrassment of riches obscures a poverty of nutritional content and genetic diversity.

In the top left you have simmered Nagaoka bamboo shoots and wakame seaweed from Izumo, served in a Karatsu-ware bowl. Next to that, on the long Oribe dish, is grilled masu salmon seasoned with pepper tree leaves. The square Kutani bowl is dashi-simmered egg scrambled with green peas. The next row down is a series of five small Imari plates. Starting on the left: white miso clam gratin; salad of finely chopped cockles and Kujo green onion; tilefish sashimi with a ponzu, miso, and pepper-tree-leaf dressing; slow-cooked Tamba chicken in a salt koji marinade. At the end, on the right, is pickled sweetfish sushi, served whole. The round dish at the bottom is a selection of wild vegetables: butterbur buds, devil's-walking-stick, ostrich fern, momiji-gasa, bracken shoots, and smilax. Normally those would be served as tempura, but I've gone for something a little different and deep-fried them Western-style instead. Sprinkle them with matcha salt if you like, or they go very nicely with this green peppercorn-infused Worcestershire sauce." Nagare produced a bottle of white wine. "Now, will something like this do?" "Hang on a moment," said Kana, reaching for her digital camera again. "My friend in Tamba makes this," continued Nagare. "Hundred percent Chardonnay grapes, fermented in small French casks, apparently. Has an elegant flavor--- perfect for spring, I'd say.

The sakura shrimp fishing season has just started in Yui, so that's the first catch you're eating. If you believe what they say, that means you'll live a long and healthy life." Nagare removed the lid from the bowl, releasing a cloud of steam. Kana leaned over, closed her eyes, and took a deep sniff of the clear broth. "It smells wonderful!" "The only solid ingredient is diced tofu. Plus a garnish of pepper tree leaves." "Just tofu? But this aroma--- it's so complex." "The stock is from quick-grilled sweetfish bones. I had plenty of them left over from all that sushi." "So that's what I'm picking up," replied Kana, sniffing the steam again. "Who'd have thought those tiny little bones could add so much flavor?

Everything on this platter is hamo eel or ayu sweetfish: two essential parts of Kyoto summer cuisine," explained Nagare. "Starting from the top left: miniature hamo sushi rolls. One teriyaki-style, and one shirayaki--- without any seasoning, that is. Next to that, in the small bowl, is shredded hamo eel skin, pickled and served with okra. On top of the bamboo grass leaf are two little ayu, caught in the Katsura River--- salted and grilled. In the glass sake cup is a delicacy known as uruka--- basically the salted entrails and roe of the ayu. Similar to shiokara, if you've had that. The deep-fried dish in the middle on the right is ayu fry. They're sprinkled with sansho pepper salt, so you can enjoy them as they are. Bottom right, on the perilla leaf, is hamo no otoshi: boiled slices of the eel, served with pickled plum paste and myoga ginger. Bottom left, meanwhile, is hamo no hasamiyaki, which is seasoned with white miso and fried between slices of Yamashina eggplant.

You quickly simmer the hamaguri clams in sake, mirin, and soy sauce, then serve them on the rice. At Fusa Sushi, the resulting leftover liquid was boiled down and used as a glaze for the conger eel and hamaguri clam sushi. But because Kazusa-meshi was so popular, there was still plenty of the stuff left over. Rather than waste it, the owner started taking it over to his brother next door--- who put it in his ten-don sauce. The owner of Fusa Sushi kindly told me the recipe." "So that sauce I just ate was flavored with... hamaguri clams?" asked Keiko, gazing steadily at the photo. "That's right. Now, the soup at Tenfusa was hamaguri broth. I made the fish ball the way he told me too, using a mix of hamaguri and white-fleshed fish. That's right--- the first time you visited, I happened to be serving a sake-simmered hamaguri stock for the soup. Of course, in that soup, the fish balls were made from sardines--- which your hometown of Ishinomaki is famous for. That, combined with the clam-flavored broth, explains why you found the flavor so nostalgic. You've quite the discerning palate, clearly!

Naomi’s comin’ over with some chow she got at that sushi place,” Alex said. “Nice raw fish wrapped in fake seaweed.” Amos groaned again. “That’s not nice, Alex,” Holden said. “Let the man’s liver die in peace.” The door to the suite slid open again, and Naomi came in carrying a tall stack of white boxes. “Food’s here,” she said. Alex opened all the boxes and started handing around small disposable plates. “Every time it’s your turn to get food, you get salmon rolls. It shows a lack of imagination,” Holden said as he began putting food on his plate. “I like salmon,” Naomi replied.

How do you feel about sushi?” she asked. “After a week of hospital food, I’d eat my own shoe and like it. Sushi sounds great.

I’d hardly call four years rushing things. I love you and I think I know you better than anyone. I know your favorite food is sushi and that you hate rap music and all about your unhealthy obsession for Gerard Butler.” “Oooo, Gerard,” she teased.

When people get sick after eating sushi or sashimi, they often blame the rawness for their stomach distress, saying something like, “I must have had bad tuna.” It’s more likely their problems were caused by the fact that they never had tuna at all. While

He put one of the platters in front of Liv, forcing her to get up-close and personal with his dinner creation. It looked even worse on her plate than it had from a distance. Liv was glad she had a strong stomach. She’d seen some fairly disgusting things during nursing school, especially during her surgery rotation and in the burn unit, but none of them were quite as nasty as Baird’s “pizza.” “Well, go ahead. I thought you were starving.” She looked up to see him watching her, black eyebrows raised in anticipation. Oh my God, I’m actually going to have to eat it! Her stomach rolled at the thought. “You, uh, gave me so much I don’t know where to begin,” she lied weakly. “Only one piece.” He frowned. “Is it too much?” “It’s just a little more than I’m used to. Uh, on Earth we cut a pizza into eight or ten wedges.” And we don’t top it with fruit cocktail! “I can cut it into smaller pieces if you want,” he offered. “No, no. That’s okay. I’ll make do.” There was no putting it off anymore. Taking a deep breath, Liv lifted the huge sloppy slice and forced herself to take a bite. “You like it?” Baird stared at her suspiciously. “Mmm, delicious,” Liv mumbled, fighting her gag reflex. Inside her mouth the flavors of canned salmon, lima beans, and fruit cocktail were fighting and she wondered how in the world she would swallow without throwing up. But the big warrior was still watching her carefully for her reaction and she didn’t want to insult him. With a monumental effort she choked down the mess and prayed it wouldn’t come back up. “So it’s good?” he asked again. “Unforgettable,” Liv assured him which for once was the absolute truth. “Glad you like it.” Baird lifted his own piece of pizza and, keeping his eyes on her the entire time, took a huge bite. But when he started to chew, his face turned a peculiar shade of red. “Gods!” Getting up from the table in a hurry, he ran to the sink and spat out the mouthful. Then he turned back to Liv. “That was fuckin’ horrible. Why didn’t you tell me?” Liv shrugged, not sure if she should laugh or feel sorry for him. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” “I’d rather have my feelings hurt than eat that slop.” Baird frowned. “I don’t understand what you humans see in that dish anyway.” “Well…” Liv tried to think of a way to put it tactfully. “We don’t always make it exactly like that.” She nodded at the half a pizza she’d put back down on the metal serving tray. “But I did everything the clerk told me to,” Baird protested. “He said it was mistake proof. That anyone could do it.” “Anyone can do it. You just put a little too much on it, that’s all.” “Damn it to hell.” Baird sighed. “I’m sorry, Olivia. I wanted to make all your favorites—the things I saw you eating in my dreams. It was between this and that other stuff you like with the raw sea creatures rolled in the white grains. I thought this would be easier.” “Sushi?” Liv bit her lip to keep from laughing. “You were going to try and make me sushi?” As badly as he’d screwed up the pizza, she couldn’t imagine what his version of sushi would look like. Visions of a whole dead fish coated in sticky rice and rolled in peas and carrots instead of roe rose to mind. Ugh. Baird shrugged. “I wanted to. I wanted to make you something special every night. But I guess I’m not very good at cooking human food. Sorry.” He sounded so crestfallen and his broad shoulders slumped so sadly that Liv couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She rose and went to put a hand lightly on his arm. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure if I tried to make Kindred cuisine I wouldn’t do any better.” Baird

He’d stopped talking about bonding her to him forever and had apparently decided to concentrate on being charming instead. Liv never would have believed that such an intensely alpha male could be light and playful but she had been seeing an entirely different side of Baird lately. Aside from the sushi class, he’d also taken her to an alien petting zoo where she was able to see and touch animals that were native to the three home worlds of the Kindred and they’d been twice to the Kindred version of a movie theater where the seats were wired to make the viewer feel whatever was happening on the screen. He’d also taken her to a musical performance where the musicians played giant drums bigger than themselves and tiny flutes smaller than her pinky finger. The music had been surprisingly beautiful—the melodies sweet and haunting and Liv had been moved. But it was the evenings they spent alone together in the suite that made Liv really believe she was in danger of feeling too much. Baird cooked for her—sometimes strange but delicious alien dishes and once Earth food, when she’d taught him how to make cheeseburgers. They ate in the dim, romantic light of some candle-like glow sticks he’d placed on the table and there was always very good wine or the potent fireflower juice to go with the meal. Liv was very careful not to over-imbibe because she needed every ounce of willpower she had to remember why she was holding out. For dessert Baird always made sure there was some kind of chocolate because he’d learned from his dreams how much she loved it. Liv had been thinking lately that she might really be in trouble if she didn’t get away from him soon. If all he’d had going for him was his muscular good looks she could have resisted easily enough. But he was thoughtful too and endlessly interested in her—asking her all kinds of questions about her past and friends and family as well as people he’d seen while they were “dream-sharing” as he called it. Liv found herself talking to him like an old friend, actually feeling comfortable with him instead of being constantly on her guard. She knew that Baird was actively wooing her, doing everything he could to earn her affection, but even knowing that couldn’t stop her from liking him. She had never been so ardently pursued in her life and she was finding that she actually liked it. Baird had taken her more places and paid her more attention in the past week than Mitch had for their entire relationship. It was intoxicating to always be the center of the big warrior’s attention, to know that he was focused exclusively on her needs and wants. But attention and attraction aside, there was another factor that was making Liv desperate to get away. Just as he had predicted, the physical attraction she felt for Baird seemed to be growing exponentially. She only had to be in the same room with him for a minute or two, breathing in his warm, spicy scent, and she was instantly ready to jump his bones. The need was growing every day and Liv didn’t know how much longer she could fight it.

If sushi occupies a position in Japan’s food hierarchy akin to that of haute French in the West, then ramen’s culinary status hovers somewhere around the prestige of a sloppy joe. The status of instant ramen? Probably several notches below that.

I tried the deep-fried horse mackerel--- your father's favorite, apparently--- and it was far better than any version of it I've ever had in Kyoto." "You're rambling, Dad," complained Koishi. "Tell him about the nori-ben." "What's the rush? Anyway, the point is, Mr. Aramiya knows his fish. He comes from a long line of fishermen, and apparently even ran his own sushi place at one point. With someone like that whispering secrets in your father's ear, it's no wonder his nori-ben turned out so delicious." Nagare picked up the right-hand bento and continued. "Sure, it looks exactly the same. Both on top---" he inserted a pair of chopsticks into the top-right section, which Kyosuke hadn't yet reached--- "and when you dig down inside." Koishi and Kyosuke watched as Nagare carefully set the segment on the lid of the bento, revealing the individual layers. "And yet it's not the same." "Hmm... it has the same three layers. Looks identical to me," said Koishi, inspecting it from the side. Kyosuke nodded in agreement. "The difference is this part in the middle," said Nagare, removing the top layer of nori. "Look carefully. Those aren't bonito flakes, are they?" "You're right!" exclaimed Koishi, leaning in for a closer look. "Is that... fish meat?" Kyosuke was still gazing blankly, apparently unable to see the difference. Nagare darted into the kitchen, emerging a moment later with a styrofoam box. He held it up in front of the waiting pair, then opened it to reveal a fish. "Cutlass fish, this is called. See how it looks just like a sword? That's what's in the bento. Grilled, minced, and seasoned with soy sauce and kabosu fruit. Both cutlass fish and kabosu are Oita specialties--- and the citric acid in the kabosu stops the dish from spoiling too. If you just use bonito flakes, the flavor can get a little monotonous, but this gives it heaps of depth.

thepsychchic chips clips iii Jared gives me an assignment: I need to map out my emotional process so that I can start finding ways to solve each problem. I need to actually sit down and make a spreadsheet. Each time something happens, write it down in the situation trigger column. In the next column write a description of the thoughts, emotional reactions, and behaviors that the situation or trigger causes. In the next column give your best assessment of the underlying flaw or problem, and finally, write a logic statement that I can use in the moment to inject some rationality into the issue. 258 Jared’s 20 minute break routine for Maria: First 5 minutes of break: off load and brain dump. I write down some of the key hands so that they don’t occupy any of my headspace going forward. … Then a few minutes of contemplating my decision making. Asking myself: How was my thinking? Were there any emotionally compromised decisions? … Next 10 minutes: nothing. No poker talk, no thinking. Just walking and relaxing. And then, right before the end of break, a few minutes of warm-up for the next level. 276 - 277 EB White: “an honest ratio between pluck and luck.” 287 Food in Los Vegas: For sushi, Yui and Kabuto. For dinner close to the Rio, the Fat Greek, Peru Chicken, and Sazón. For when I’m feeling nostalgic for the jerk chicken of my local Crown Heights spots, Big Jerk. Lola’s for Cajun. Milos, but only for lunch. El Dorado for late-night poker sessions. Partage to celebrate. Lotus of Siam to drown your sorrows in delightful Thai. 314

Finally, Diana had worked her way down to the Abbey, an upscale restaurant with a small but lush courtyard that featured a tinkling fountain, a pair of wooden benches, flowering bushes and stands of tall grasses, and a statue resembling Rodin's The Thinker (one of the few things she did remember from the art history class she'd taken). She'd never eaten there, but she remembered Dr. Levy mentioning it as one of the places she and her husband visited for date night at least once every summer. She sat on the bench for a minute to rest her feet and peruse the menu. Tuna sushi tempura (eighteen dollars for an appetizer). Almond-crusted cod with a mandarin-citrus beurre blanc (twenty-eight dollars) and butter-poached lobster (market price). The list of cocktails and special martinis ran two pages, and when she walked up the curved stone steps and stepped into the dining room, the views of the bay were gorgeous.

So for the first course, we have flounder sashimi served with green onions and momiji oroshi, or daikon radish with chili pepper." The fish was delicate and subtle, with a nice, firm texture. What followed after this opening course was an onslaught of fantastic nigiri, small balls of pressed sushi rice with various toppings, served two at a time so I could fully appreciate each perfect morsel. Sea bream was followed by sweet shrimp, tamago, yellowtail, salmon, soy sauce-braised octopus, crab, grilled eel, and the final two pieces were otoro, or tuna belly. The richest, fattest, most melt-in-your-mouth pieces of tuna I'd ever had.

Inside an H Mart complex, there will be some kind of food court, an appliance shop, and a pharmacy. Usually, there's a beauty counter where you can buy Korean makeup and skin-care products with snail mucin or caviar oil, or a face mask that vaguely boasts "placenta." (Whose placenta? Who knows?) There will usually be a pseudo-French bakery with weak coffee, bubble tea, and an array of glowing pastries that always look much better than they taste. My local H Mart these days is in Elkins Park, a town northeast of Philadelphia. My routine is to drive in for lunch on the weekends, stock up on groceries for the week, and cook something for dinner with whatever fresh bounty inspires me. The H Mart in Elkins Park has two stories; the grocery is on the first floor and the food court is above it. Upstairs, there is an array of stalls serving different kinds of food. One is dedicated to sushi, one is strictly Chinese. Another is for traditional Korean jjigaes, bubbling soups served in traditional earthenware pots called ttukbaegis, which act as mini cauldrons to ensure that your soup is still bubbling a good ten minutes past arrival. There's a stall for Korean street food that serves up Korean ramen (basically just Shin Cup noodles with an egg cracked in); giant steamed dumplings full of pork and glass noodles housed in a thick, cakelike dough; and tteokbokki, chewy, bite-sized cylindrical rice cakes boiled in a stock with fish cakes, red pepper, and gochujang, a sweet-and-spicy paste that's one of the three mother sauces used in pretty much all Korean dishes. Last, there's my personal favorite: Korean-Chinese fusion, which serves tangsuyuk---a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork---seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and black bean noodles.

Of all the countries Fairchild had visited, Japan struck him as the most advanced on matters of horticulture. He learned about Japanese miniature gardens, the art of Japanese papermaking, and the superior qualities of Japanese fruits and vegetables that didn't grow anywhere else in the world. Wealthy people introduced him to foods of affluence, like raw fish, seaweed, and a bean cheese they called tofu. He thought it impossible to eat with two narrow sticks held in one hand, but after a few tries, he got the feel for it. It was in Japan that Fairchild picked up a yellow plum known as a loquat and an asparagus-like vegetable called udo. And a so-called puckerless persimmon that turned sweet in sake wine casks. One of the most unrecognized discoveries of Fairchild, a man drawn to edible fruits and vegetables, was zoysia grass, a rich green lawn specimen attractive for the thickness of its blades and its slow growth, which meant it required infrequent cutting. And then there was wasabi, a plant growing along streambeds in the mountains near Osaka. It had edible leaves, but wasabi's stronger quality was its bitter root's uncanny ability to burn one's nose. Wasabi only lasted in America until farmers realized that its close relative the horseradish root grew faster and larger and was more pungent than the delicate wasabi (which tends to stay pungent only fifteen minutes after it's cut). Small American farms still grow Fairchild's wasabi, but most of the accompaniment to modern sushi is in fact horseradish---mashed, colored, and called something it's not.

Thanks to a documentary series on Netflix, I knew that nachos were called nachos because of their inventor's name (Ignacio, nicknamed Nacho). Croissants originated in Australia, not France, a tricky question that knocked all the other teams down... except for Bennett. Thanks to a paper I'd written in college on the history of the celebrity chef, I knew that the first TV celebrity chef was Fanny Cradock in England, not Julia Child, which three of the other teams thought. Not Bennett, of course. I wondered how he knew about Fanny. She wasn't exactly a household name. At least, not here. If I asked him, he'd probably expound upon a teenage trip to England, where he'd visited the former set. The first food eaten in space? Applesauce. The first sushi restaurant in New York City? Nippon.

the ability to reach customers is more cost effective than ever—therefore the intangible and emotional elements have become the key differentiating factor. There are plenty of places to purchase a great spicy tuna roll, but there’s only one Masayoshi Takayama. According to his website, “Masayoshi Takayama’s appreciation for food started at a young age, growing up working for his family’s fish market in a town of Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. From his early years of delivering fresh sashimi to neighbors on his bicycle, to prepping and grilling hun- dreds of fish courses to cater weddings in high school, his relation- ship with food has always been a way of life.” That’s the beginning of a story that makes Takayama’s sushi different and special—that makes it art. And that art is what induces people to pay $600 per person in his New York restaurant for a chance to try it.

Tokyu Food Show!" Oscar and Nik both said. I eagerly followed the gang to their favorite local food spot in Shibuya Station, where another Japanese department store with a basement food hall offered dazzling displays of grilled eel, fried pork, fish salad, sushi, seafood-and-rice wraps, dumplings, mochi cakes, chocolates, and jellied confections.

EASY FIRST FINGER FOODS FOR BABIES • steamed (or lightly boiled) whole vegetables, such as green beans, baby corn, and sugar-snap peas • steamed (or lightly boiled) florets of cauliflower and broccoli • steamed, roasted or stir-fried vegetable sticks, such as carrot, potato, egg plant, sweet potato, parsnip, pumpkin, and zucchini • raw sticks of cucumber (tip: keep some of these ready prepared in the fridge for babies who are teething—the coolness is soothing for their gums) • thick slices of avocado (not too ripe or it will be very squishy) • chicken (as a strip of meat or on a leg bone)—warm (i.e., freshly cooked) or cold • thin strips of beef, lamb or pork—warm (i.e., freshly cooked) or cold • fruit, such as pear, apple, banana, peach, nectarine, mango—either whole or as sticks • sticks of firm cheese, such as cheddar or Gloucester •breadsticks • rice cakes or toast “fingers”—on their own or with a homemade spread, such as hummus and tomato, or cottage cheese And, if you want to be a bit more adventurous, try making your own versions of: • meatballs or mini-burgers • lamb or chicken nuggets • fishcakes or fish fingers • falafels • lentil patties • rice balls (made with sushi rice, or basmati rice with dhal) Remember, you don’t need to use recipes specifically designed for babies, provided you’re careful to keep salt and sugar to a minimum.

The Ex-Brat girls all had identical takeout containers- rectangular-shaped and about the size of a box of chocolates, with a plastic red liner inside the box to separate beautifully arranged food items like sushi, tempura, rice, and dumplings. The boxes looked more like orange gifts than ordinary lunches. Curiosity won out over my sense of intimidation. I had to know. "What are you guys eating?" I asked them. "Konbini lunches," said Imogen. "Konbini are convenience stores." "So much cuter than ICS caf food," said Jhanvi, using chopsticks to pick through a carefully arranged box filled with sushi and edamame.

I placed the first piece of sushi in my mouth. HIGH HOLY HEAVEN! It was like a dance of flavors and textures- salty, rich, sweet, chewy yet silken- all at once. "This is maybe the best thing I've ever eaten," I said after swallowing. To be fair, food that good did deserve rules for eating. Each flavor ping caused epic delirium to my taste buds. Ramen was okay. Sushi was the bomb.

The meal begins the way all kaiseki meals begin, with hassun, a mixed plate of small bites- fish and vegetables, usually- used to set the tone for the feast to come. In a bowl of pine needles and fallen leaves he hides smoky slices of bonito topped with slow-cooked seaweed, gingko nuts grilled until just tender, a summer roll packed with foraged herbs, and juicy wedges of persimmon dressed with ground sesame and sansho flowers. Autumn resonates in every bite. While the rice simmers away, the meal marches forward: sashimi decorated with a thicket of mountain vegetables and wildflowers; a thick slab of Kyoto-style mackerel sushi, fermented for a year, with the big, heady funk of a washed cheese; mountain fruit blanketed in white miso and speckled with black sesame and bee larvae.

The green sponge turned out to be fu (wheat gluten), a high-protein Buddhist staple food often flavored with herbs and spices. The pink-and-yellow cigarette lighters turned out to be yogurts. The lime-green yo-yos were rice taffy cakes bulging with sweet white bean paste. As for the vermilion-colored mollusks, they were a kind of cockle called blood clams (or arc shell) and, according to Tomiko, "delicious as sushi." The jumbo green sprouts came from the daikon radishes and were "tasty in salads." And the pebbly-skinned yellow fruit was yuzu, an aromatic citrus with a lemony pine flavor that was "wonderful in soup.

From the salty bite of gizzard shad to the supple sweetness of horse mackerel to the crunch and brine of ark shell clam, Sawada guides you through the full spectrum of ocean taste and texture. A giant prawn split into two pieces delivers dessert levels of sweetness. Saltwater eel is equal parts crunchy skin and tender flesh. Smoked bonito, in all its concentrated, fire-kissed intensity, will keep you awake at night.

In the U.S., to have a personal relationship with a Japanese chef across the counter, you have to go for sushi. I enjoy sitting at a sushi bar, but there is always the whiff of haute cuisine in the air (or, if you pick the wrong sushi place, the whiff of something worse). You can visit an expensive, artisan counter in Tokyo and order unusual and impeccable seafood, but come on: tempura is fried stuff. You drink frothy mugs of cheap beer and call for more food any time you like. Bacon-wrapped cherry tomatoes on a stick, tempura-fried? Sure, we had that. A bowl of dozens of whole baby sardines, called shirasu? Absolutely. (Iris claimed these for herself.) Why aren't there tempura bars in every city in America?

Every day, I eat a bowl of veggie soup, drink veggie juice, and eat pâté made out of the post-juicing pulp mixed with garlic, lemon juice, kale, spinach, and avocado. I serve it on bananas and other fruits so it looks like sushi. But my favorite concoction, which I created three years ago, is a medley of cabbage, onion, avocado, and pear. It’s incredibly delicious, extremely healthy, and fast to prepare. This dish also gave me a deep insight about eating: there was no way to make food better than this. I felt pride and a surge of energy, realizing that I actually ate the best in the world.

Starters Corn chowder with red peppers and smoked Gouda $8 Shrimp bisque, classic Chinatown shrimp toast $9 Blue Bistro Caesar $6 Warm chèvre over baby mixed greens with candy-striped beets $8 Blue Bistro crab cake, Dijon cream sauce $14 Seared foie gras, roasted figs, brioche $16 Entrées Steak frites $27 Half duck with Bing cherry sauce, Boursin potato gratin, pearls of zucchini and summer squash $32 Grilled herbed swordfish, avocado silk, Mrs. Peeke's corn spoon bread, roasted cherry tomatoes $32 Lamb "lollipops," goat cheese bread pudding $35 Lobster club sandwich, green apple horseradish, coleslaw $29 Grilled portabello and Camembert ravioli with cilantro pesto sauce $21 Sushi plate: Seared rare tuna, wasabi aioli, sesame sticky rice, cucumber salad with pickled ginger and sake vinaigrette $28 *Second Seating (9:00 P.M.) only Shellfish fondue Endless platter of shrimp, scallops, clams. Hot oil for frying. Selection of four sauces: classic cocktail, curry, horseradish, green goddess $130 (4 people) Desserts- All desserts $8 Butterscotch crème brûlée Mr. Smith's individual blueberry pie à la mode Fudge brownie, peanut butter ice cream Lemon drop parfait: lemon vodka mousse layered with whipped cream and vodka-macerated red berries Coconut cream and roasted pineapple tart, macadamia crust Homemade candy plate: vanilla marshmallows, brown sugar fudge, peanut brittle, chocolate peppermints

We have pretzels and mustard. We have doughnuts. And if we really, really like you, we have chips and dip. This is fun food. It isn't stuffy. It isn't going to make anyone nervous. The days of the waiter as a snob, the days of the menu as an exam/ the guest has to pass are over. But at the same time, we're not talking about cellophane bags here, are we? These are hand-cut potato chips with crème fraîche and a dollop of beluga caviar. This is the gift we send out. It's better than Christmas." He offered the plate to Adrienne and she helped herself to a long, golden chip. She scooped up a tiny amount of the glistening black caviar. Just tasting it made her feel like a person of distinction. Adrienne hoped the menu meeting might continue in this vein- with the staff tasting each ambrosial dish. But there wasn't time; service started in thirty minutes. Thatcher wanted to get through the menu. "The corn chowder and the shrimp bisque are cream soups, but neither of these soups is heavy. The Caesar is served with pumpernickel croutons and white anchovies. The chèvre salad is your basic mixed baby greens with a round of breaded goat cheese, and the candy-striped beets are grown locally at Bartlett Farm. Ditto the rest of the vegetables, except for the portobello mushrooms that go into the ravioli- those are flown in from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. So when you're talking about vegetables, you're talking about produce that's grown in Nantucket soil, okay? It's not sitting for thirty-six hours on the back of a truck. Fee selects them herself before any of you people are even awake in the morning. It's all very Alice Waters, what we do here with our vegetables." Thatcher clapped his hands. He was revving up, getting ready for the big game. In the article in Bon Appétit, Thatcher had mentioned that the only thing he loved more than his restaurant was college football. "Okay, okay!" he shouted. It wasn't a menu meeting; it was a pep rally! "The most popular item on the menu is the steak frites. It is twelve ounces of aged New York strip grilled to order- and please note you need a temperature on that- served with a mound of garlic fries. The duck, the sword, the lamb lollipops- see, we're having fun here- are all served at the chef's temperature. If you have a guest who wants the lamb killed- by which I mean well done- you're going to have to take it up with Fiona. The sushi plate is spelled out for you- it's bluefin tuna caught forty miles off the shore, and the sword is harpooned in case you get a guest who has just seen a Nova special about how the Canadian coast is being overfished.

Vinegar is also a protective factor. Used in many traditional foods, it may help reduce insulin spikes. Italians often eat bread dipped in oil and vinegar—a prime example of eating a high-carb food with protective factors. Vinegar is added to sushi rice, which reduces its glycemic index by 20 per cent to 40 per cent.53 Fish and chips are often eaten with malt vinegar. Apple cider vinegar may be taken diluted in some water.

Will your friend allow curry powder on her raw foods?" "Not allowed, my dear," said Nat Morrill. "Curry powder is already a mixture, thus impure. In any case, she does not allow one to sprinkle something on top of something else." "This is worse than kashruth," Leah said. "What about sushi?" "Not allowed. It's raw, but still, it's a combination, because of the rice, the seaweed." "Sashimi?" "Fine. But no joining, no marriage of the fish with soy sauce or pickled ginger, no green shiso leaf.

Mariko had given her notorious sweet tooth full rein. Lex stared at the table of food and could already feel the sugar eating cavities into her enamel. Banana nut bread, sesame-crusted Chinese doughnuts, almond cookies, fruit cocktail and almond custard, steamed egg cake, even honey walnut prawns. On the non-Asian side was rum cake, blueberry pecan muffins, strawberry almond rolls, and croissants.

Diana talked about visits to Tokyo and Rome. Daisy listened, wistfully recalling her own grand plans. When Beatrice no longer needed bottles or sippie cups or an endless supply of chicken nuggets, Daisy had wanted to travel, and Hal had been perfectly amenable. The problem was that his idea of a perfect vacation was not Europe but, instead, a resort with a golf course that could be reached by a direct flight from Philadelphia International Airport, while Daisy wanted to eat hand-pulled noodles in Singapore and margherita pizza in Rome and warm pain au chocolat in Paris; she wanted to eat in a sushi bar in Tokyo and a trattoria in Tuscany; to eat paella in Madrid and green papaya salad in Thailand; shaved ice in Hawaii and French toast in Hong Kong; she wanted to encourage, in Beatrice, a love of food, of taste, of all the good things in the world. And she'd ended up married to a man who'd once told her that his idea of hell was a nine-course tasting menu.

Aah. This is a Causa ... ... one of Peruvian cuisine's most classic dishes." The word Causa means "mashed potatoes," and the dish is one with deep ties to Peruvian traditions. Various seafoods are sandwiched between layers of mashed potatoes and pressed together into a large roll. One could think of it as a giant potato salad sushi roll. Kobayashi minced the spear squid, blending it together with egg whites and onions in a food processor before seasoning it with lemon, mayonnaise and soy sauce. The resulting ground squid she formed into a patty and fried to make a light and fluffy squid burger. As the centerpiece of her dish, she sandwiched the patty between layers of mashed potatoes seasoned with bright yellow Ají Amarillo. *Ají Amarillo is a type of yellow chili pepper. A traditional seasoning in Peruvian cuisine, it has both spiciness and fruity sweetness.* She used Irish Cobbler potatoes- the pride of Hokkaido- to make the mashed potatoes. Their natural sweetness nicely emphasizes the body of the squid's flavor.

Mmm, pike! The first thing that springs to mind is yummy salt-grilled pike! The crispy skin... the hot, succulent meat... the savory smell of its juices... A dollop of grated daikon radish on top, and it's yum, yum, yum!" "It's been showing up on sushi menus recently too. That's a general ingredient for you. You can do tons of stuff with it." "As you all know, pike can be used in a wide variety of dishes. But strangely enough, this one ingredient... ... has connections to all three of our contestants. A pike.. ... with its fatty meat is known for itsrobust fragrance. It is a prized ingredient in seafooddishes across the world. And it has a long history of use in what is viewed as common cuisine!" "Oho! It has facets that appeal to all three chefs." "That means it's an ingredient that can play to each of their strengths!

The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm, the whole time complaining about big oil.