By Trevor Corson
Inside America's sushi revolution
Subject
Themes
In the summer of 2005, twenty-year-old Kate Murray leaves San Diego for the California Sushi Academy in Hermosa Beach, a twelve-week programme housed inside a struggling restaurant called Hama Hermosa. She arrives with no cooking experience, no knife skills, and a history of depression and kidney disease; sushi had restored her health, and she wants the camaraderie of life behind the sushi bar. Her instructor, Zoran Lekic, is a Yugoslav-Australian former bodybuilder and air force veteran who yells constantly and holds Kate to exacting standards. The academy's founder, Toshi Sugiura, arrived in L.A. in 1978 without training, talked his way behind a bar in Malibu, and built a celebrity-packed restaurant in Venice Beach before tax evasion, a stroke, and fierce competition brought him low. A Japanese student, Takumi Nishio, hides his past as a pop star and approaches sushi with the devotion of someone who believes seven spirits reside in every grain of rice.
In the summer of 2005, twenty-year-old Kate Murray leaves San Diego for the California Sushi Academy in Hermosa Beach, a twelve-week programme housed inside a struggling restaurant called Hama Hermosa. She arrives with no cooking experience, no knife skills, and a history of depression and kidney…
Trevor Corson's approach to food writing belongs to a tradition of narrative nonfiction that uses a specific human story as the vehicle for exploring a vast subject. In the lineage of writers like John McPhee and Mark Kurlansky, Corson embeds months of firsthand observation within a framework that…
Sushi's most fundamental flavours arise not from the freshness of raw fish but from ancient processes of fermentation and decay. Aspergillus oryzae, a mold cultivated in Japan for centuries, underpins three of the cuisine's essential components: miso, soy sauce, and rice vinegar. Small shops guard…
The tension between Japanese tradition and American adaptation runs through every aspect of the sushi world. When Noritoshi Kanai opened America's first sushi bar inside Kawafuku restaurant in 1966, flying in fish from Tokyo and buying discarded tuna bellies from Boston, the customers were…
Every creature served at the sushi bar carries an astonishing biological story. Fish evolved from worms roughly 540 million years ago; their flesh contains minimal collagen compared to land animals, making them naturally tender and enjoyable raw. Saltwater fish fill their cells with free amino acids…
Kate Murray's journey from total novice to working sushi chef forms a narrative of persistence against a culture of exclusion. She arrives at the California Sushi Academy unable to cut a cucumber, afraid of her own knives, and convinced she is the class flake. Her instructor Zoran alternates between…
Beneath the glossy surface of sushi lies a troubling environmental reckoning. Demand for the cuisine has placed extraordinary pressure on marine ecosystems, and the most prized species suffer disproportionately. Bluefin tuna populations have been severely depleted worldwide. These warm-blooded…
Kate Murray drags herself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. on the Fourth of July 2005, drives from San Diego to Los Angeles, and arrives late at the California Sushi Academy in Hermosa Beach. Nine students stand around a stainless-steel table with no chairs. Toshi Sugiura, the academy's founder and a pioneer…
Jay Terauchi drives to the California Rice Center to collect 150 pounds of factory-produced sushi rice for a catering job. He reflects on the sorry state of American sushi etiquette: customers stirring wasabi into soy sauce, gobbling pickled ginger as an appetiser, dunking the rice side of nigiri…
Toshi prepares tuna for the Paramount Pictures catering job, teaching Takumi to cut against the grain. Most restaurant "wasabi" is actually horseradish and mustard powder dyed green. At the studio, actors in cowboy costumes man the security checkpoints. Toshi deploys his secret weapon: the Suzumo…
Zoran challenges the students to fill a sushi order in twenty minutes, teaching them the correct sequence: inside-out rolls first (soggy nori is hidden inside), then big rolls, then crispy thin rolls last, and nigiri at the very end. He makes three rolls simultaneously, completing five in under five…
Zoran teaches the students to gut and grill whole mackerel. He demonstrates cutting behind the head without severing it, so the organs pull out attached when the head is twisted off. Kate stares at the decapitated fish and pokes at its innards, failing to clean out the bloodline. Fish evolved from…
Marcos inserts bamboo skewers into tiger shrimp tails to straighten them for nigiri. Every Pandalus shrimp starts life male and later transforms into female; if females are scarce, males delay their sex change. Zoran has made the students rip tails from live shrimp, since crustacean muscles digest…
Zoran grudgingly teaches creative American-style rolls, listing names like dragon, rainbow, and "ragin' Cajun" (tempura alligator). Takumi invents a geometrically perfect "domino roll" with two small rolls packed inside a larger one, then a "Russian roulette roll" of identical cucumber pieces, one…
Zoran announces he is leaving the academy in two weeks, returning to Australia. Kate asks who will teach them; Zoran says perhaps Tetsu or Toshi. Despite the shock, the Monday lunch counter draws seventeen customers. Kate confidently squeezes a cucumber roll for a businessman, then serves her mother…
Flatfish look like Picasso paintings, with both eyes on one side. About 550 species divide into left-sided (hirame, considered delicacies) and right-sided (karei, cheaper). Baby flatfish are born normal but over a few days their skull, brain, and eye sockets rotate to one side, triggered by thyroid…
Kate maintains a personal disgustingness ranking: live shrimp first, yellowtail guts second. Octopus and squid possess eight tentacles, each with its own independent brain. Respected Tokyo chef Jiro Ono massages live octopus for forty minutes before boiling. Cephalopods evolved from shelled nautilus…
Kate learns the nightclub job has fallen through. At the test, Toshi corrects Kate's posture by dropping into a forty-five-degree fighting stance and belting out a warrior's cry: "Huuuggghh!" Power enters the arm from the stance, he explains. Marcos tries to match his speed and slices his finger,…
Kate serves omakase to her mother and brother at the final student sushi bar, joking that she could make "tacos" (tako means octopus in Japanese). She creates sashimi, eel hand rolls, a spider roll with cilantro, flatfish nigiri with lemon, and her own "Kate roll." On Hama Hermosa's last night, the…
Kate's first sushi job at a Beverly Hills mall is a nightmare. The manager runs the operation like a sushi-roll factory, and Kate and two classmates squeeze out California rolls and spicy tuna rolls a hundred at a time, stuffing them in fridges for the lunch rush. She rarely interacts with customers…
By Trevor Corson
Subject
Themes
In the summer of 2005, twenty-year-old Kate Murray leaves San Diego for the California Sushi Academy in Hermosa Beach, a twelve-week programme housed inside a struggling restaurant called Hama Hermosa. She arrives with no cooking experience, no knife skills, and a history of depression and kidney disease; sushi had restored her health, and she wants the camaraderie of life behind the sushi bar. Her instructor, Zoran Lekic, is a Yugoslav-Australian former bodybuilder and air force veteran who yells constantly and holds Kate to exacting standards. The academy's founder, Toshi Sugiura, arrived in L.A. in 1978 without training, talked his way behind a bar in Malibu, and built a celebrity-packed restaurant in Venice Beach before tax evasion, a stroke, and fierce competition brought him low. A Japanese student, Takumi Nishio, hides his past as a pop star and approaches sushi with the devotion of someone who believes seven spirits reside in every grain of rice.