I think the takeaway here is that sushi is a global cuisine, and what people do in Peru or Brazil, all these different types of sushi are equally as valid and that’s the amazing thing. We shouldn’t turn our noses up at the sushi bagel, or the sushi pizza, or whatever is new. It’s just all part of sushi’s long story. – Eric Rath
🎧 Sushi From necessity to ubiquity (Eat This)
The California Roll was only the beginning. Or at least, the beginning of global domination. Back in the mid 1980s, when I made a documentary for BBC TV about disgust and learned food habits, we chose sushi as our exemplar of the Westerner’s idea of hard-to-understand foods. Raw fish. Cold rice. Seaweed. What’s to like? If I had known then of the rich history of sushi, I’m sure we could have made even more of its strange 1980s incarnation.
Eric Rath’s history of sushi traces the word back to its origins as a method of preserving fish through many twists and turns to today, when sushi means almost anything you want it to mean.
Another dive into the history of food. As seems to often be the case, what we appreciate as sushi today is in stark difference to the practices of preserving fish in the past.