The Bizarre Truth (23 page)

Oligarchs, dictators, Mafiosi, supermodels, and food freaks—anyone with deep pocketbooks—scrounge for reservations not at French tables of gastronomy, but at the handful of high-end sushi restaurants around the world. A food that was originally thought to be peasant fare (pickled fish) ended up having rice and
nori
applied to it as a way to keep gamblers from marking their cards, dice, and gambling debts. Later it became the ultimate Japanese snack food, captivating the imagination of hundreds of millions of consumers around the world.

I remember going out to Montauk on Long Island to go bluefish fishing with my dad when I was six or seven years old. We were going out on one of the big party boats that left from in front of Salivar’s Dock. Later that afternoon when we returned from our day on the ocean, we saw these giant 300- or 400-pound beasts being slung on derricks from the docks, then hoisted into open-air
dump trucks wheeled up to the water’s edge. I asked my dad where these big fish were going, lying in the bins on the backs of these trucks. We found out that these behemoth fish were being driven mid-island to a cat-food factory for processing. My, how the world has changed.

Those same fish now regularly garner $150,000 a pop at Toyko’s Tsukiji Market, where they are flown fairly regularly. The boats that catch the primo tuna will actually have graders flown out to the vessels by helicopter. They’ll inspect the fish, pull it into the helicopter’s belly, and whisk it away to an international airport. Fifteen hours later, it’s auctioned off at Tsukiji Market. Sadly, in the food world today, the currency of the realm is expensive fresh fish, the very thing customers in Japanese restaurants, and a host of other styles of eateries, crave the most.

I remember when Japanese food was essentially a handful of little yakitori-style restaurants in Manhattan. I was probably eleven or twelve when my friends, the Wakabayashi family, began taking me to Tenryu on a weekly basis. Invariably, one of our appetizers was a large platter of assorted sashimi and sushi. Around the same time, I began accompanying my dad to lunches and dinners at the old and long-since-closed Edo Restaurant in the West Forties. Like most sushi newcomers, Tekka-maki was the first thing I fell in love with, those small chunks of tuna rolled in rice and nori. I eventually graduated to eel, freshwater and saltwater; hamachi; then to geoduck, known in Japan as mirugai. This gigantic saltwater clam soon became my favorite.

The first time I tried uni, or raw sea urchin, was at Hatsuhana. The liver-y and softly textured creamy roe of the sea urchin isn’t for everyone, but I adored its one-of-a-kind saline and minerally flavor profile. This was the place to eat sushi and sashimi in the late seventies. I would sit mesmerized for hours as I watched the brigade of sushi chefs with long, thin blades turning four-inch chunks of cucumber into paper-thin sheets. They would make their thin cucumber paper, rolling it around in thin warm slices
of unagi, then slice it thin, creating little eel and cucumber pin-wheels, one of their first signature dishes.

I love sushi and sashimi, and I’ve eaten some great fish in my day. Still, to my mind, one of the great experiences in my food life was getting up at oh-dark-thirty and heading over to Tsukiji Market to watch the fresh and frozen tuna auctions. Participants still dress up in the ancient uniforms, march into the auction room, and barter away for some of the most beautiful fish you’ve ever seen in your life. I’ve had the honor of escorting 300-pound fish from the market floor at four in the morning to a dealer’s booth. This wholesaler cut up the fish, dispensing pieces to sushi restaurants around the greater Tokyo metro area who had placed orders with him that day. I watched the cutters take six-foot-long samurai swords and divide the fish into panels, separating the chutoro from the otoro and the toro from the guro. He weighed the different cuts of tuna, wrapped it up, and sent it on its way.

I’ve learned more about tuna from spending a few days at Tsukiji Market than I ever did eating and working in restaurants. I’ve prowled the market extensively, hopping booth to booth, tasting tuna brought in from different parts of the world. I’ve had wholesalers lead me by the hand to the carcass of mammoth blue-fin and yellowfin tuna, where they’d run a spoon along certain bones or along the spinal cord, collecting scrapings of particularly fatty or noteworthy bites to educate me on what to look for in terms of fat content, flavor, and texture.

I’ve eaten some of the most world-renowned sushi. I’ve been lucky enough to dine at Nobu Matsuhisa’s restaurants many times. I’ve probably visited eight or nine of them globally, often getting fed by the Master himself. I didn’t think anything could top having Nobu Matsuhisa himself prepare uni, raw scallop, a selection of toro, and more for me, standing behind the sushi bar at his restaurant one night in Los Angeles. This was the thrill of a lifetime—until I got a chance to eat with him in the kitchen of his Tokyo restaurant a year later. If you’ve never eaten poached octopus eggs
cooked in dashi and mirin, accompanied by some fresh fried frog, I implore you to get on a plane and head to Tokyo immediately.

And speaking of frog, not in my wildest dreams did I ever consider eating frog sashimi. They serve it in Japan at a little getemono bar called the Asadachi, which hysterically translates to “morning erection.” Tokyo’s getemono bars are notorious for serving food-forward, psyche-challenging dishes, so if you’re jonesing for a grilled lizard, that’s where you go. Businessmen flock to these little restaurants to eat for sport, usually as a way to celebrate the closing of an auspicious business deal. Eating frog sashimi involved more audience participation than I’d anticipated. I actually selected my live frog from a basket. The chef then took a penknife and ripped its skin off. He served me paper-thin slices of the frog’s flesh with a bit of soy and lemon sauce for dipping, along with a separate bowl for the still-beating frog’s heart.

On several occasions I’ve found myself at Jewel Bako’s sushi bar in New York City. One of the greatest things about frequenting the same sushi bar is building a relationship with the chef. I often turn the ordering over to Yoshi, one of the great sushi chefs in the city, who hand-selects cuts of fish for me, like teeny filets of melting silver needlefish flown in from Tsukiji Market. He scores the skin with the sharpest of knives, finishing it with a blowtorch to char the skin. The flesh, still cold, is placed on some of the best vinegared rice I’ve ever tasted. If you’re really up for a challenge, try Yoshi’s live lobster sashimi washed down with a hot and comforting bowl of lobster miso soup.

I am not, by the way, in the business of animal cruelty, and the debate can rage on for decades about whether or not a lobster has “feelings,” but there are many cases (oysters, clams, to name a few) where lively freshness is imperative when dining, and frankly, in most cases I am very content being ensconced firmly at the top of the food chain. I would also say that many of the more extreme examples of my dining on live animals falls into the experiential category and not into the everyday-habit category.
That’s not supposed to make you feel better if you are against this sort of thing, but it makes me feel better.

I’ve dined several times at Nozawa in Los Angeles. At the turn of the millennium, when Nozawa was the king of raw fish in Los Angeles—a city unrivaled in its passion for sushi—he turned out some of the most incredible food that I’ve eaten in a sushi bar: freshly steamed Dungeness and king crab in two separate hand rolls, flesh still warm, plucked from the shell by his wife and his assistant, who help him run the tables. I remember those crab rolls like it was yesterday.

Nozawa’s reputation for phenomenal food is almost eclipsed by his ironfisted approach to serving sushi. He’s not far off from Seinfeld’s infamous Soup Nazi when it comes to personality profiles. He plates the food, giving you the portions that he believes you should have. You do not ask for seconds. You do not over-order. If a dish is not accompanied by soy sauce, pickled ginger, or wasabi, it is not an oversight. He wants you to eat a certain piece of fish without it. This man isn’t looking for you to have a pedestrian experience. If you challenge him, you run the risk of being kicked out.

I’ve actually seen him give customers the boot, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. Before my Nozawa experience, I’d seen it only once before: at 150 Wooster, Manhattan’s hottest celebrity-driven dining spot in the eighties. I was in there one night and looked over to see a regular, seated at one of the premier tables, sent out the door midmeal, dinner hastily packed up in hand, because they wanted to give Mick Jagger and his entourage that table. But that’s nothing compared to Sushi Nozawa, where nearly every time I visited someone got kicked out for not playing by Nozawa’s rules. He’s got opinions, to say the least.

The sushi in New York, Los Angeles, and other major cities around the globe is superb, but if you want the best, go to Japan. In recent years, Tokyo has emerged as a big player in the global food scene, possibly even more so than Paris or New York, especially
in the last few years. Consider the controversy that sparked after Michelin assembled their first-ever dining guide for Tokyo. Michelin, famous for their tires, is just as famous for their restaurant and hotel guides. More than a century ago, the Michelin Company created the guide to help traveling salesmen find restaurant and hotel recommendations on the road. Today, it’s sort of the ultimate restaurant guide, dealing mostly with European offerings. Eventually, they started covering the United States, and a couple of years ago they announced a plan to put together a Tokyo book.

The total number of stars given to Tokyo restaurants eclipsed that of Parisian restaurants, sending off a firestorm of conversation in the blogosphere and in restaurant kitchens worldwide. Which one is the greatest eating city? I’ve spent a lot of time eating my way around the world’s food meccas, including Paris and Tokyo. You can’t convince me that Tokyo
isn’t
the most exciting food city in the world—let’s put it that way, and that says a lot. It’s sort of like asking, who’s the better basketball player: Magic, Bird, or Michael? Who’s a better golfer: Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods? It’s hard to say.

There certainly is a lot of culinary magic going on in Japan, and not just with their restaurants. Good Japanese cooks, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with many in my life, are brilliant replicators. So precise, with impeccable knife skills. Their diligence, discipline, and powers of concentration are far beyond the average Western cook’s. Give them a classic French or Italian dish and within a day they can nail it every time. The great French and Italian restaurants in Tokyo are hindered only by availability of ingredients, which in the age of the airplane does not limit them much at all. But the last time I was in Tokyo, I had the opportunity to have a meal alone by myself in an empty restaurant in between lunch and dinner that stands to this day as the greatest single sushi experience I’ve ever had.

Sushi Mizutani is a teeny restaurant in the basement of the Ginza Seiwa Silver Building, right around the corner from the
Shimbashi Station. Open six days a week, serving lunch and dinner Monday through Friday, I’d have to say this gem is the best sushi restaurant in the city.

Don’t go with a crowd—you won’t want to. Go with one good friend—preferably someone you feel comfortable pawning the bill off on. You’ll easily spend $200 to $300 a person—and with Mizutani’s amazing sake collection, probably a lot more. Depending on how the space is configured, you might even want to go alone—the place holds only between eight and ten counter seats. Behind the counter is a space that is only big enough for one person to walk through at a time, and there is only one chef here, so no need for more room. A table for two, tucked away in the corner across from the sushi bar, may be used at dinnertime, but only when the chef Mizutani deems it fit to seat someone there. He loves to dole food out himself, lavishing stories on his patrons, allowing them a front and center seat to what may be the greatest set of sushi skills operating in the world. Mizutani is the man. Every bite of food in this restaurant passes through his hands at some point.

The real magic happens before the restaurant even opens, when Mizutani himself, along with his assistant, prowls the markets, collecting the best product available in the city—and with almost fifty years of cooking under his belt, he knows what he’s looking for. He’s a neat and tidy little man, very thin with a big, round face and easy smile. His giant round glasses emphasize the sloping features of his face. He’s probably approaching seventy if he’s not already there, but he has the energy of a man half his age.

His restaurant is spare and without pretention. You actually go down into the building’s basement, where you’ll find a nondescript sliding screen door. You knock and enter. It’s one of the more hidden-away restaurants that I’ve ever experienced, especially for one of this caliber, but Mizutani doesn’t want it any other way.

He’s been there for years now, doing what he does like no other: simply providing people with the best. The best-quality fish and shellfish, the best aged soy sauce, the best shari (vinegared rice).
Every ingredient has a special provenance. His rice, for example, comes from a handful of growers at a very special farm a couple hundred miles away. The vinegar is made in a renowned prefecture in northern Japan. Dishes have few ingredients, but each one is of the highest quality available, bar none. This all sounds very serious, but the restaurant’s vibe is anything but. It’s hard to contain yourself when you’re just blown away by this food.

Dinner reservations are scheduled months in advance, if you can get in at all. Lunch, of course, is less crowded and you might be able to weasel your way in, especially early or late. I couldn’t get there during regular service hours, so Mizutani met with me in between meal periods. I watched as lunch emptied out before I sat down to eat alone with him, chatting with him about his craft.

I think the food world has sort of come full circle in many ways. It used to be that all food was served on platters. Think of Erroll Flynn’s
Robin Hood
, in which the banquet scene reveals that in that day and age, and it is historically correct, all the food was on platters, with everyone sharing family-style. Over the course of the next couple hundred years, as the food idea slowly turned into less of a classist exercise, taverns came into vogue, and then restaurants. Real restaurant culture developed in Europe in the early nineteenth century, but tavern culture, places to have a meal, existed for centuries. Individual foods plated in single servings is a relatively modern convention.