The Sushi Economy by Sasha Issenberg

Author:Sasha Issenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2007-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

In mid-afternoon, the sushi chefs slowly bring their prep work from the kitchen to the sushi bar. Five chefs work a night and their positions are as firmly determined as seats on a stock exchange. The bar at Uchi is a backward “L,” with the letter’s short leg facing the restaurant’s door and the long side looking out over the dining room.

The spot at the bar’s corner feels like the bow of a ship jutting into the restaurant, and it is there that the head sushi chef presides. (Two or three nights a week, this is Cole; the rest of the time, Le.) That spot is known as Ichiban, Japanese for “number one.” The spot to Ichiban’s right is known as “Zero Bar,” and to his left is “Two”; to two’s left are “Three” and “Four.” While some bars feature sushi chefs who each make all their items and dishes from start to finish, Cole has designed his to employ a factory-style division of labor. Uchi’s sushi production line, however, is not designed to create efficiency but to exploit expertise. (Musashino’s was modeled the same way.)

Under the Uchi system, only Ichiban cuts fish. This is, of all the sushi chef ’s tasks, the one demanding the most skill, the one where failure carries the greatest risk, and the one that the Japanese tradition celebrates most, for its essential nobility. Zero Bar and Two make nigiri sushi and sashimi, in addition to the unique sushi-ish dishes featured on Uchi’s menu. Three and Four handle only makimono, or rolls. The odds are that a chef handing a dish over the glass case to the diner sitting in front of him didn’t make it.

The chefs’ afternoon regimen reflects this hierarchical division of sushi-bar labor. Ichiban spends most of the time breaking down tuna: trimming skin and unnecessary fat and squaring off pieces small enough to fit into the case in front of him. No red piece of tuna goes unused: Anything Ichiban doesn’t hold on to—every piece of skin, every oddly shaped nub—is put aside. Ichiban also cuts salmon fillets into similarly manageable pieces that go into the case. Zero Bar and Two work with the smaller fishes—sea bass , black snapper, red snapper—scaling them, removing the head and tail, and cutting them down to fillets. Three and Four spend their afternoon with what passes for drudge work in the sushi world: cutting avocado, cooking shrimp, making rice. The only fish they touch is the scraps of tuna skin off which they use a spoon to assiduously scrape out residue that will fill rolls. One can spot them popping a piece of bluefin into their mouths here or there, or doing the same with a piece of shrimp, after having run it beneath a torch for a few seconds and sprinkled it with salt.

Often, as was the case in Cole’s career, Three and Four will be the first job in sushi for an aspiring chef. The goal is to get promoted to actually making sushi—and then one day to being a head chef.

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