President Obama and Prime Minister Abe met at the Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi house in Ginza. The rather small pure sushi restaurant, with some 10 stools surrounding the kitchen on the basement floor of a Tokyo building, is so famous among Japanese and foreigners that you must wait a month to get a stool. The menu includes several kinds of fresh raw fish and laver sushi, and costs some 30,000 yen ($290) a dish.
Much earlier, before the house got its Michelin stars, I had a chance to visit the Jiro sushi house. Japanese don't use spoon much, but Jiro didn't even lay chopsticks on the bar. "Chopsticks have tangs which interfere with my sushi's flavor. Use your own fingers," the chef told me.
Jiro believes that sushi rice, sumeshi in Japanese, is the decisive factor in the taste of sushi, and the taste of sumeshi almost entirely depends on the rice vinegar used. Shaven-headed current chef Yoshikazu Ono, the son of Jiro, produces his own rice vinegar which has no pungent smell of vinegar when used with sushi.
Jiro, now 89 years old, has received three stars from Michelin in 2008. After carefully selecting fresh fish at the fish dock, he starts the day's work by smoldering fresh lavers using heat from well selected charcoal. It's not just a matter of placing a sheet of laver over the fire for smoldering. He does this in such a meticulous manner in order to erase any fishy smell soaked in the laver, while still maintaining the laver's shoreline flavor.
There is no logic, but he knows how to do it. The chef Yoshikazu, now 50, learned this laver-burning technique from his father. The son is still learning from his father on how to "grasp sushi" (making such with fingers and palm) and is confident that he will keep the Michelin three stars.
President Obama said after the dinner, "That's the best sushi I've ever tasted."
Lee Sam-jin
Seoul
Much earlier, before the house got its Michelin stars, I had a chance to visit the Jiro sushi house. Japanese don't use spoon much, but Jiro didn't even lay chopsticks on the bar. "Chopsticks have tangs which interfere with my sushi's flavor. Use your own fingers," the chef told me.
Jiro believes that sushi rice, sumeshi in Japanese, is the decisive factor in the taste of sushi, and the taste of sumeshi almost entirely depends on the rice vinegar used. Shaven-headed current chef Yoshikazu Ono, the son of Jiro, produces his own rice vinegar which has no pungent smell of vinegar when used with sushi.
Jiro, now 89 years old, has received three stars from Michelin in 2008. After carefully selecting fresh fish at the fish dock, he starts the day's work by smoldering fresh lavers using heat from well selected charcoal. It's not just a matter of placing a sheet of laver over the fire for smoldering. He does this in such a meticulous manner in order to erase any fishy smell soaked in the laver, while still maintaining the laver's shoreline flavor.
There is no logic, but he knows how to do it. The chef Yoshikazu, now 50, learned this laver-burning technique from his father. The son is still learning from his father on how to "grasp sushi" (making such with fingers and palm) and is confident that he will keep the Michelin three stars.
President Obama said after the dinner, "That's the best sushi I've ever tasted."
Lee Sam-jin
Seoul
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