Japanese food is, as I’ve said before, one of the great contributions to world food culture. But nothing remains “pure,” even if it was in some sense pure to begin with. Our favorite sushi place here in Hilo features lots of avocado-filled futomaki, poké (marinated sashimi, basically, available in a wide variety of styles and flavors, and destined to become Hawai’i’s most distinctive contribution to world food) as a side dish and in sushi (the rice-side-out poké sushi rolled in crushed macadamia nuts is my wife’s top pick) and one of my personal favorites is the Green Bay roll, with smoked salmon, cream cheese and asparagus.
Nothing brings out creativity like food. And nothing drives creativity in food like the restaraunt market, in which responding to local tastes frequently trumps purity of spirit or style (though “purity” is often a valuable market niche as well). So it was with little surprise that I learned that Israeli sushi [gracious half-bow to Jonathan Edelstein] is moving in its own directions.
Your article recalls fond memories of a kosher sushi shop I saw a few years ago in the Marais
(a heavily Jewish section of Paris), which featured “shirashi” instead of 散らし寿司. No doubt
this was just a re-spelling of a typical Francophone’s reading of romaji “chirashi” — but
since I myself don’t eat any shellfish, it’s become a convenient name for our home-made version
of this dish.