How Old Were You When You First Tasted Raw Fish Sushi?

[Jingthing]

Don't ask me why but I was thinking about when I first tasted sushi and how it was later for me than for many other types of food. The reason is that when I was very young I had barely even heard of sushi, much less being exposed to it. Then I moved to San Francisco, ha ha ... So I didn't even try sushi until about age 23. Kind of late. I imagine most younger people are trying it much earlier now.

[sbk]

My nephew has been eating sushi since he was about 7, I guess I was about 18. I think it depends on the person tbh, jing. some people are really put off by the idea of eating uncooked fish.

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

I was just a little younger than you, maybe 20, and it was also in San Francisco. I thought the sushi back in the 70's in California was not very good. When express shipping became economically practicable for fresh food, the sushi in the mainland U.S. vastly improved. The fish for sushi is much better off the Hawaiian and Australian coasts, although most of it still ends up in Japan. I didn't appreciate sushi until I moved to Hawaii in 1985. By the time I returned to California, Nobu Matsuhisa had set the standard for sushi restaurants in America.

[Jingthing]

I think HAMACHI would probably be on my desired last meal list.

I recently watched this food show featuring a master sushi chef. It was rather revealing. Apparently, the RICE is much more important than most of us realize. According to this master chef, it takes YEARS for a master sushi chef to train in getting the rice exactly right and they don't even get to work on the fish until that part is over.

Edited May 1, 2010 by Jingthing

[PeaceBlondie]

Never.

[Musongman]

I believe sushi/sashimi chefs are not permitted to use perfumed deodorant or cologne, nor soap for hand washing. A clear alcohol is poured over the hands and ignited before the commencement of his work. Plain water and a towel is used thereafter to keep his hands hygenic.

[Jingthing]

Never.

I wouldn't dare call you closed minded, but closed mouthed, perhaps.

I am not thrilled with the sushi at places like Zen compared to the same price points in the US/Canada and frankly too cheap to go to the high end places here, so bottom line I don't each much sushi in Thailand. Probably the best sushi I have had was in Vancouver.

Edited May 1, 2010 by Jingthing

[PeaceBlondie]

Never.

[Jingthing]

Never.

Got it!

Out of curiosity, have you tried cold smoked salmon/lox? I remember growing up having friends who wouldn't try it saying that it is raw fish (silly).

Edited May 1, 2010 by Jingthing

[Dave the Dude]

Never and intend to keep it that way.

[PeaceBlondie]

LOX is liquid oxygen.

[PhilHarries]

I think, certainly for westerners, that food is becoming more global. When I was a kid there were restaurants and fish & chip shops and that was pretty well it unless you went to London and we couldn't afford that.

Then there was Indian and Chinese places and now in any major western city you can eat virtually any cuisine you want.

However, when I first heard of sushi (or are we talking sashimi?) it really turned me off but then I found the world and my tastes grew up.

<edit : finished the reply in defiance to this &lt;deleted&gt;' piece of guano called a computer. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!>

Edited May 1, 2010 by PhilHarries

[tutsiwarrior]

don't know about sushi but I had raw octopus inna starter salad at the Little Tokyo restaurant in Pasadena corner of Colorado an' Fair Oaks in 1969 when I was about 19 y.o... the works wid tenacles wid suction cups, the lot...

I wuz with me mate both cruisin' on reds an' he said 'ye gotta check out de salad...ye won't believe it...' nicely dressed with rice vinegar and garnished wid sesame seeds and not bad...later, we got a gallon of Red Mountain an' coasted out de evening...

that experience put the hook in me as far as jap cuisine is concerned...I reckoned that if they could make horror movie special effects taste good then &lt;deleted&gt;? never tried no sushi as it wasn't widely available in California until later but you could always get sashimi...meself I always ordered a nice yosenabe wid de fish fully cooked; nothin' beats the sensation of walkin' out of a restaurant with yer belly fulla fish and vegetables...

[PhilHarries]

Wasabi? Now we're talking serious eats. That 30 second delayed action sinus clearance is truly awesome.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I forgot in my earlier reply, interrupted by a &lt;deleted&gt;' computer that moved the &lt;deleted&gt;' keys from where they should be, to mention my age at the first exposure to sushi/sashimi. That would be around 30-35 y.o.

[Jingthing]

LOX is liquid oxygen.

Okie dokie.

[thrilled]

80% willeat it sometime in their life.If your like the 20% of us,we like it cooked thank you.

[Jingthing]

Never is a valid choice.

[bob4you]

Visited Hawaii in my 20's first experience, move there for 20 years when I was 40, Hawaii not only eats Sushi (raw fish on rice) but sashimi (slice raw fish, dipped in soy sauce) and poke (raw fish, crab, squid, shrimp) mixed with onions and other vegetables and eaten like a salad or a side dish on a meal. When fishing on the ocean you always have a bottle of soy sauce with you to get the really fresh raw fish.

It is an acquired taste as is their poi but once you acquire it you will always want more.

[ChangMaiSausage]

Sashimi when working in Libya the Korean's who took care of the compound gave me some one night (drunk) it was also the first time I tried dog though at the time I did not know it was rover.

[Ulysses G.]

I first tried it at Japan Town in San Francisco and enjoyed the looks and texture and wasabe, but it took a few years to really get hooked on the taste of the raw fish. No, sushi is not as good as in California in Thailand, but after years of not having it when I first arrived, I am grateful to have it at all.

Edited May 2, 2010 by Ulysses G.

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

Visited Hawaii in my 20's first experience, move there for 20 years when I was 40, Hawaii not only eats Sushi (raw fish on rice) but sashimi (slice raw fish, dipped in soy sauce) and poke (raw fish, crab, squid, shrimp) mixed with onions and other vegetables and eaten like a salad or a side dish on a meal. When fishing on the ocean you always have a bottle of soy sauce with you to get the really fresh raw fish.

It is an acquired taste as is their poi but once you acquire it you will always want more.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm! Poke! It's a thing of beauty. Maybe the greatest beer food.

[PhilHarries]

[mmmmmmmmmmmmm! Poke! It's a thing of beauty. Maybe the greatest beer food.

Don't know it, enlighten us please

[IMA_FARANG]

I had to be between 30 and 40...probably closer to 40. Anyhow I'm an old F--t so when I was young nobody would have thought of eating raw fish, except maybe Californians....and they were all pot-smoking Hippie Freeko's anyhow to the good-ol-boys in my neck of the woods.

It took me a while to get myselff educated about that stuff...shaking off my up-bringing I guess you would say.

Of course I did eat a lot of strange stuff. I had a snake meat sandwhich in Vietnam, and probably some dog meat too. I just was not asking all that closely at the time. And I drank a lot of the local 33 beer there also. The local beer was call Bamiba (not sure of the spelling) which came form the Vietnamese words for the number thirty-three (Ba Moui Ba or three-tens-three) because the beer had a large number 33 on the bottle. That stuff had everything from paint thinner to rubbing alchohol added to it to boost the kick of the booze. But I guess that's drinking, not eating.

I did try eating cooked Sea Slugs in a Chinese restaurant once and some raw Pickeled Octopus Tentecles in a Korean restaturant...the Octopus wasn't bad either. The Sea Slugs were rather bland and not much for taste, it was more done as a joke after a little too much booze. I guess that wasn't technically Sushi, either, because it wasn't Fish. (Sea Slugs are like a Anemone, that lives undersea on rocks, and is a filter feeder that strains the water for its food).

So it probably wasn't some time in the 1980's, probably after 1982, that I actually tried any kind of Sushi. It had to be in a Japanese restaturant in Bangkok, although I don't know what one or exactly when. I was born in 1946...so I must have been close to 40 when I finally got around to Sushi.

But now that I think of it, I did have Japanese seaweed/rice cookies that I was given by a Japanese American friend when I was in the military in Vietnam. But again that's not Sushi, is it.

[seedy]

I was working in Canada's Arctic, and got my first taste from the native people. Arctic Char - which is very oily. The locals, when travelling on the land, would take a frozen fish, and shave pieces off of it, same as whittling wood. These would go in an outside pocket of your parka, where they would stay frozen. When you started to feel cold as you travelled on the land, flip off a mitt, reach in your pocket, and grab one or two pieces. Place in your mouth, where they would melt, with all that delicious oil, chew and swallow. Yum - Yum !!!

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

Visited Hawaii in my 20's first experience, move there for 20 years when I was 40, Hawaii not only eats Sushi (raw fish on rice) but sashimi (slice raw fish, dipped in soy sauce) and poke (raw fish, crab, squid, shrimp) mixed with onions and other vegetables and eaten like a salad or a side dish on a meal. When fishing on the ocean you always have a bottle of soy sauce with you to get the really fresh raw fish.

It is an acquired taste as is their poi but once you acquire it you will always want more.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm! Poke! It's a thing of beauty. Maybe the greatest beer food.

[toptuan]

And the Japanese can't figure out why they have the world's highest rate of intestinal parasites. Follow the lemmings, TV-ers!

BTW: I ate sushi, sashimi, etc. constantly for ten years while doing business in Japan. Still hate it.

[Ulysses G.]

Sushi is all flash frozen these days - which kills any parasites.

Why did you eat raw fish if you didn't like it? Japanese cuisine has plenty of tasty cooked dishes to eat.

[toptuan]

Sushi is all flash frozen these days - which kills any parasites.

Why did you eat raw fish if you didn't like it? Japanese cuisine has plenty of tasty cooked dishes to eat.

When in Japan on business, it is the custom for your business host to order for you without asking your preferences or choice. It is an affront for the guest to suggest otherwise. One of the prices of doing business vs. the tourist's privileges. Believe me, $14m in annual sales for our company to Japan was certainly worth the price of a few stinky fish stuffed down the gullet.

Sushi may be flash frozen where you eat it (7-11?), but that is laughable in Japan at most of the sushi/sashimi restaurants and seaside villages/cities.

Edited May 3, 2010 by toptuan

[sbk]

Mr sbk wouldn't touch sushi for years, said there was a reason the Japanese were so small, they all had worms!

But, he's also learned that tropical fish have far more parasites than cold water fish and actually loves sushi now. Once tried, he was hooked.

[PhilHarries]

^^ very true tt, same way I got into sushi/sashimi but I don't worry too much about parasitic bugs in my food.

That's what the like of mebendazole is for.

In Europe now all "fresh" fish sold for raw consumption has to have been frozen previously. How they work out what you're going to do with it when you get it home beats me but raw fish is way down on my risks list at the moment.