Sashimi - love it or hate it?

[bhchao]

What are your attitudes towards eating sashimi?

I hate it. It may be healthy, but no matter how much I eat, I can never get full with it. This speaks for Japanese food in general. Plus it's very expensive for just two pieces of raw fish, with an average of $5 USD for two slices. Some restaurants charge more than that.

The only thing good about it is the wasabi that comes with it.

[darkprince]

i LOVE it, can't get enough of it. Raw food just seems to really gel with me, not sure why.

[skylee]

I love it but am losing interest.

[novemberfog]

I hate it. It may be healthy, but no matter how much I eat, I can never get full with it. This speaks for Japanese food in general. Plus it's very expensive for just two pieces of raw fish, with an average of $5 USD for two slices. Some restaurants charge more than that.

I am curious how it is served where you live. They only give you two slices for that price? At least in Japan, sashimi normally comes with a set--some sort of interesting rice combination and soup and what not. In izakaya and other drinking wells, it is served alone, but of course you eat lots of small things while filling up on beer or other alcohols.

The price is rediculous for sashimi and sushi in North America, however. For US$5 you can buy a whole bowl of rice with various types of sashimi on the top. I suppose that sushi and sashimi are very trendy, and I think that is why restaurants get away charging so much for it.

[Quest]

Like it once in a while, but Japanese raw fish in general cost too much. $15 for 3 pieces of toe-size fatty tuna, $150 check for a 2-person dinner at Ginza sushi house. Those were among my most memorable dinning experiences when in college.

[HashiriKata]

I hate it. It may be healthy, but no matter how much I eat, I can never get full with it. This speaks for Japanese food in general.

That's because you haven't mastered the art of eating Japanese food: after an expensive meal, you're supposed to slip into a noodle restaurant nearby to supplement your meal with a cheap bowl of noodle soup!

[bhchao]

I am curious how it is served where you live. They only give you two slices for that price? At least in Japan, sashimi normally comes with a set--some sort of interesting rice combination and soup and what not. In izakaya and other drinking wells, it is served alone, but of course you eat lots of small things while filling up on beer or other alcohols.

Sashimi is also included with a main entree (such as beef or chicken teriyaki), rice, salad, and miso soup for an average of $15-$18 USD, at many Japanese restaurants in the US. However I still don't get full with this kind of arrangement.

Eating sashimi at the sushi counter is a worse deal, especially if you are eating at the counter with a date or significant other. Expect to rack up big $ when the bill arrives. And in many instances, you still end up hungry, especially if you are a male.

The price is rediculous for sashimi and sushi in North America, however. For US$5 you can buy a whole bowl of rice with various types of sashimi on the top. I suppose that sushi and sashimi are very trendy, and I think that is why restaurants get away charging so much for it.

Agreed. Part of the reason why it's so expensive is the appearance, presentation, and decoration factor. This helps reinforce the "chic" image associated with it, and in a way allows chefs to justify charging high prices to customers who are taken in by that perception. Of course sashimi also needs to be kept fresh daily.

Japanese restaurants in the US are on an upward trend compared to 20 years ago. Restaurants with hibachi grills and elegantly designed sushi counters. However I think many of this is just for show at the expense of price convenience and food portions, and the food offered in trendy restaurants may not be really authentic "Japanese" food.

Like it once in a while, but Japanese raw fish in general cost too much. $15 for 3 pieces of toe-size fatty tuna, $150 check for a 2-person dinner at Ginza sushi house. Those were among my most memorable dinning experiences when in college.

I used to like sashimi when I was in college too. Saba (mackerel) was my favorite. But my preferences and taste buds have completely gravitated towards Korean food. Not by deliberate choice, but by Darwinian adaptation. Bulgogi or "dak bul gol gi" seemed more appealing than beef or chicken teriyaki. Plus I like my fish grilled now.

Just my personal opinion, but you get more bang for the buck with Korean and Chinese food than you do with Japanese food. The latter though is the cleanest and least messy or greasy to prepare.

[bhchao]

The New York Times published this today: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/world/asia/26tuna.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

In the dark green waters off the coast of western Japan here, scores of 150-pound bluefin tuna glided counterclockwise inside a pen 100 feet in diameter, the telltale blue streaks on their bodies shimmering just below the surface.

The fish, though, were not just any kind of bluefin tuna, whose fatty flesh is the most prized delicacy at exclusive sushi restaurants in Japan and has set off fishing wars in the world’s oceans. They represented the holy grail of fish breeding: bluefin tuna born and raised in captivity.

They were also the lifework of the man shoveling mackerel into the pen from the edge of a boat one recent afternoon, Hidemi Kumai, 71, the head of Kinki University’s Fisheries Laboratory. Mr. Kumai had spent more than three decades trying to farm the bluefin tuna — an unusually delicate fish, both physically and psychologically, prone to everything from restlessness to cannibalism — before succeeding in 2002. Two years later, he began sending it off to sushi counters in Osaka and Tokyo...

When he undertook his quest in 1970, tuna were plentiful in Japanese waters and the Japanese were really the only people interested in eating slices of raw fish. Today, even as the popularity of sushi keeps increasing worldwide, overfishing and pollution have pushed down edible fish stocks...The Japanese, who eat about 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna, are now contending with competition from, predictably, the Chinese. As Chinese in Beijing and Shanghai become sushi devotees, they are paying top dollar for bluefin. Some of the best sushi restaurants in Japan are grumbling that bluefin has become too expensive and hard to buy — and that they might scratch tuna from their menus instead of suffering the indignity of serving the cheap stuff.

There is a “high possibility,” Mr. Kumai said, that in a decade or two, as China keeps getting richer, Japan may simply be priced out of a shrinking bluefin market.

“Now only Chinese in the coastal areas are eating sushi, or can afford to,” Mr. Kumai said. “What happens when the Chinese in the vast hinterland start eating sushi?”

As part of Japan’s national interest, and also because the Japanese have been exhausting the world’s tuna stocks, Mr. Kumai advocated the large-scale farming of bluefin tuna, led by the government.

“This has to be a national project,” he said. “Now Americans and Chinese are eating sushi, so we can’t just sit back.”.....

Some sushi chefs here in Kushimoto sniff at the ranched bluefin, saying it yields a fatty meat that does not taste as good as the wild variety. Wild bluefin, migrating across oceans, tend to be lean. But Mr. Kumai’s couch potatoes are 10 percent lean and 90 percent fatty.

Because of decreasing stocks, Mr. Kumai’s bluefin is now sold only once a month at a Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo — for a third less than the wild kind. That fact annoyed Mr. Kumai.

“Just because it’s farmed, the prices are automatically lower,” he said. “If it’s good, it’s good. There shouldn’t be a difference.”

[Ian_Lee]

In Hawaii, sashimi is comparably cheap. In fact, I have sashimi at least once a week with plenty of ahi (Hawaiian name for tuna), salmon, ikura, ika, hamachi,....on the table.

Of course, the tuna are all local catches. When they are abundant, yellow fin tuna can be as cheap as US$7.99/lb (price for maguro). The problem is that most blue fin tuna caught locally are shipped to Japan and what are left in Hawaii are only yellow fin and big eye tuna (which are very good quality).

In fact, there are so much tuna in Hawaii that the lower grade tuna (it is called "aku") are used to make "poke" -- a mix of diced tuna with green onion, pepper, seaweed,...etc.

In Japan, I usually go to those sushi eateries in Tsujiki Fish Market in Tokyo for sashimi. Or those packaged stays in those Onsen Ryokan are also good deals. Lately I tried the Daiichi Takimotokan in Noboribetsu in Hokkaido with a dinner buffet that offers all kinds of crabs (King Crab, Taraba Crab and Snow Crab) and varieties of sashmi under 10,000 Yen/person (room, onsen and breakfast and dinner). IMO if you know where to go in Japan, it is usually cheaper than what you can have in U.S. or anywhere else.

Korean food also serves sashimi. The only difference is that they don't dip the fish with wasabi but with Korean hot paste (Gochujang). Once we rented a boat in Cheju Island and went out to fish. There we sliced the fish alive and dipped them with Gochujang and wrapped them with lettuce which also tasted very good.

But in Hong Kong I seldom tried Japanese sashimi unless they are served in the restaurants that are attached to the 5-Star hotels. The reason is that all those fishes that are served in those local generic Japanese sushi eateries are raised in the fish farms in Guangdong.

[liuzhou]

That's because you haven't mastered the art of eating Japanese food: after an expensive meal, you're supposed to slip into a noodle restaurant nearby to supplement your meal with a cheap bowl of noodle soup!

That happened to me! I took a Chinese friend to the local Sushi restaurant here in Liuzhou, Guangxi. She had never eaten Japanese before and was interested to try.

Around ¥200 later, I asked her what she thought.

"Very interesting. Do you mind if we go across the road for some 桂林米粉?"

桂林米粉 is ¥3!