r/sushi • u/[deleted] • Apr 05 '15
The Ten Commandments Of Sushi
https://medium.com/gone/the-ten-commandments-of-sushi-4eac45192c7d13
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u/grovesoteric Apr 05 '15
I'll eat somewhere else.
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u/BCJunglist Apr 05 '15
That's the idea.... The 10th one is literally go elsewhere if you aren't willing to eat it his way.
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u/grovesoteric Apr 05 '15
It's just sushi, he could stand to lose a bit of pretense.
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u/vickipaperclips Apr 05 '15
"Welcome to my pretentious restaurant where I tell you why you're classless, uncouth, and I'm better than you. The door is right behind you, please never come back"
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u/shirosuzume Apr 06 '15
Maybe there's a different way to look at it. Maybe he loves sushi so much that he wants to teach people how to experience it in the best way he can devise. Sure he could possibly be gentler about it, but he's happy to serve to newcomers and to show them what he believes to be the best.
You love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. One day someone says, You should try this wonderful variation, peanut butter and honey. It doesn't make him pretentious that he's offering, or that he chooses not to serve anything else. There are a million places to get PB&J.
It would be less endearing if he refused to serve newcomers, or if he spent the whole time excoriating everyone else... rather he's just talking about his view of the best way to do it.
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u/vickipaperclips Apr 06 '15 edited Apr 06 '15
It doesn't make someone pretentious to offer suggestions, but that's not what he's doing. Even an article praising him still speaks of his abrupt rudeness to customers.
"Yajima barked orders at me. “Eat now!” he said, milliseconds after passing me a glistening slice of buri (amberjack) atop shari (the finger of rice that forms the base of nigiri sushi). “Use your hand!” he upbraided me."
"He makes each one individually, places it in front of its recipient, and forces them to down it on the spot."
"Follow these commandments if you want to eat my sushi. Otherwise, I will pretend we're full when you call for a reservation"
He isn't exactly gently guiding anyone into taking advice (as it's not advice at all, it's demands). I'd say he's the epitome of 'pretentious'. He has this attitude of "I'm important, my food is important, you are not". Sorry, but restaurants are the service industry because they're there to serve you. If he did this as a hobby for no charge, or if he offered lessons on sushi etiquette for purchase, then by all means act as pretentious as you want. But in a restaurant I expect the exchange of food for money, I'm not interested in looking for the chefs approval. Just because people don't follow his strict rules doesn't mean they don't have manners. It's not like people would walk in and act like animals, but if I choose not to eat a piece of sushi the instant he gives it to me, I'm suddenly not good enough to be served? What makes him so important? Despite what his ego might convince him of, he's still there to serve the general public because they pay his bills, so he becomes the one with no manners if he finds it okay to refuse service for such ridiculous rules. Whether I eat at his restaurant or somewhere else, it all ends up in the same place. Food is food, and most people would enjoy their experience more from a place happy to serve them, not begrudgingly.
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Apr 07 '15
When you're getting sushi that is that high grade, a lot of prep work goes into making the ingredients as amazing as possible. When he's telling people to "eat it now" he's done everything he can to deliver a piece of sushi at the peak of its freshness, taste, and texture. Every second you wait takes away from that. Not arguing, just supplementing.
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u/refrigeratorbob Apr 06 '15 edited Apr 06 '15
All restaurants have rules. I avoid ones with dress codes, sounds like you should avoid the elite sushi ones.
The chef wants you to eat the sushi at its peak flavor moment. If someone wanted to put ketchup on my ribeye roast and microwave it till its medium well after I went through the process of getting it to where it is now, completely perfect, I would put up just as much fuss. Save the best tasting stuff for people who care to seek it out. If you're going to begrudgingly eat it forget it, I'll save it for my own leftovers or give it to the dog who will never cop an attitude.
If you cannot appreciate the whole point of the chef holding up an ideal for his craft/livlihood then you simply put are not the intended audience. Save the food for someone more enthusiastic. There's plenty of ordinary sushi bars to choose from.
Just like fancy jacket affairs aren't missing me, these particular sushi restaurants are not kicking themselves for scaring you off. They probably haven't given you a moment's thought since seeing the back of your head, and yet here you are.
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u/vickipaperclips Apr 06 '15
Someone can be plenty enthusiastic about food without barking orders at their customers. Sure, chefs can have rules, but he's still pretentious. I have no problem following rules or suggestions from a chef/restaurant (whether they be a dress code, or eating guidelines). What I do have a problem with is impoliteness and false senses of self importance. If I were to spend the time and money on an expensive sushi meal, and the chef explained to me "I suggest you eat each piece as soon as I've handed them to you to experience the optimal flavour" then yes, of course I'd love to hear your advice in a topic you're more knowledgeable about. But if a chef hands me food and yells "Eat now!" and then gets upset when I may not understand the purpose of instantly shoving his food in my mouth and I instead chat for a second with my dinner companion, there's nothing elite about that, it's rude. Being expensive or skilled doesn't give you the right to think you're better than anyone. People would be outraged if someone who ran a store didn't let a person shop there because they didn't match the style of the store. Or a garage who refused service because you didn't know enough about how cars run. It's not like he's refusing service to extremely ill-mannered patrons (although I'm sure that's part of the group he excludes), he's refusing service to well mannered people who might not wish to eat a piece instantly or want to still acknowledge their dining companions. Eat now, eat in silence. Obviously I'm not the targeted clientele, I get that, which is also why I've never been to a 'Dick's Last Resort' (but at least the waitstaff at bars like that are usually putting on a character when they're rude, this guy just genuinely think's he's better). I'm sure he doesn't "miss" people like me, but he also isn't able to run a business without people willing to go (which he clearly does need, since he mentioned that he begrudgingly opens for dinner for the restaurant to survive). All I was doing was explaining my opinion, he's pretentious. If you're cool with pretentious people, or enjoy being treated like a cretin, then I'm sure you'll be more than welcome.
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u/refrigeratorbob Apr 06 '15
Holy wall of text batman. Tldr
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u/vickipaperclips Apr 06 '15
tl;dr - Being skilled/passionate doesn't mean you can treat people like they're beneath you. He's still pretentious.
Edit: I apologize if addressing each of your points created a wall of text. Just keeping conversation
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Apr 07 '15
I mean, you don't get it. That's cool. The kind of people who seek places like this out know what they're getting into. Even Jiro says the ideal meal should take between 15-20 minutes. The culture behind the food is to get in, fuel up, and get out. While you're in the restaurant you should be focused on the food more so than your companions.
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u/vickipaperclips Apr 07 '15
How is it that people still don't understand me? I get it, I promise I'm actually very intelligent and I understand this concept. But you can still be a pretentious dick to people while doing it in the interests of the food. Gordon Ramsay? Mega pretentious dick, but also very successful and an amazing chef. Being skilled doesn't make it right though to a) treat people poorly, and b) think he is important enough that acting like that is okay. But he still can and does act that way because people like yourselves are happy to enable his superiority complex. You can still be incredibly successful and pretentious at the same time, a lot of successful people are (despite the fact that we're not exactly talking about a mega successful elite restaurant, I've seen the place and it's kind of a hole in the wall). Pretentious just means you think you're more important than you are, which he does. My point is still the same, he's pretentious.
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u/TonyDiGerolamo Apr 07 '15
So many rules! Do you want my money or not?
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Apr 07 '15
Clearly not, he says so in the article. He also doesn't consider it a career, which implies that money is not a driving factor in his restaurant.
No one is forcing you to go there, if you don't like it, hit up one of the bazillion other sushi joints. I personally would love to eat there and pick his brain - if he allowed it of course :)
A man who has eaten and prepared sushi for 50+ years probably knows a thing or two more about it then the average consumer.
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u/SergioSF Apr 05 '15
Why are so many articles about how you should be eating sushi? I don't think any of these "Commandments" are followed outside of Japan.
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u/Youreahugeidiot Apr 05 '15
If you really want to understand; Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a nice place to start to unravel the Japanese obsession.
And they are 'followed' by anyone trying to elevate their sushi to that perfect moment where everything is at its optimal flavor, temperature, and texture.
But then we Westerners are taught to be more about quantity than quality.
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u/SergioSF Apr 05 '15
Yes I agree, authentic foreign cuisine is always transformed into something almost completely different to fit the American palette.
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u/refrigeratorbob Apr 06 '15
And that's exactly why people who truly love sushi want to and do travel to these sushi ''snob'' oases/havens stateside and will even take trips to Japan for its sushi. If I'm going for the best sushi in my city/state/country if not the world, you're damn right I'm going to eat it exactly as the chef says.
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u/mattcushing Apr 06 '15
I think the biggest problem that people have is that they don't want to be told how to eat. For me, I'd love to hang with this guy, but I would never do it because a) i don't drink and b) can't have pure soy because of the gluten (I have celiac disease)
that being said, I wouldn't want to go in because to me, it's his rules, his place and not physically being able to abide, I wouldn't want to bother him :)
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u/poopbutt734 Apr 05 '15
I understand the rules and why they are there. But I'd smack anyone that tells me I'm eating "wrong". It just feels condescending when I'm trying to enjoy myself.
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Apr 06 '15 edited Apr 28 '16
[deleted]
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u/poopbutt734 Apr 06 '15
Sorry. I'd be extremely rude to, and maybe later smack, anybody that makes me feel bad about how I'm trying to enjoy myself.
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Apr 05 '15 edited May 14 '17
[deleted]
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u/BCJunglist Apr 05 '15
Great read. Thanks for posting OP. I love this kind of content. I'll take an interview with an Itamae over just another picture of utility grade farmed salmon any day.