“If you do that, the meat’s fiber is broken, so a Japanese knife you to slice it at one time.”Ĭhef Setsuraku also notes that most sushi chefs use more than one style of knife, while a more classically European-trained chef might just utilize a chef ’s knife for everything from deboning a chicken to mincing herbs.Īll of those elements, from sourcing the freshest, highest-quality ingredients to using the proper tools, join with those years, or even decades, of training to turn out the picture-perfect pieces of nigiri and sushi rolls that these three restaurants serve their guests each night.Īnd it’s perhaps that part - the focus on the guests, the experience, the hospitality - that all of the chefs we spoke with would say is the true mark of a sushi master. “We don’t do like a saw,” said Chef Setsuraku, mimicking the back-and-forth sawing motion some might use to cut through meat. “But simple is really, really hard.” No amount of skill and training can turn bad fish and subpar rice into great sushi.
“Sushi seems very simple,” said Chef Setsuraku, noting that to the casual observer it would just seem to be fish and rice. Chef Masa, as his longtime customers and friends call him, just retired, and has passed the reins to Chef Masaru Setsuraku, who trained under him for three years and continues that dedication to quality. One day it might be the tuna that is freshest, the next it might be a gorgeous salmon that his fishmonger has available.Īt O-Ku, Chef Dy Yoo and his team operate similarly, bringing in fresh fish daily to offer guests things like a recent nigiri of yellowtail belly with uni and Japanese chives.Ĭhef Masatoshi Tsujimura started Waraji more than two decades ago, and his focus on quality has never wavered. He notes that he orders his fish every single day in order to ensure that it is as fresh as can be, and he uses all of that fish that night if possible.
“It’s really important to focus on quality,” said Chef Hyun-Woo Kim of Sono. And this is where the story gets a little more complicated, because while with good ingredients and the right amount of training it would seem that anyone could make sushi, what these chefs describe is far more complex than that.
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