 There
is no right or wrong way to eat sushi, however, certain
customs will enhance your experience. Experiment the following
after cleaning your hands with the warm, moist oshiburi
(hand towel). Start with sashimi (fish without rice) to
awaken your palette to the pure flavors of the fish. Begin
with a small shoyu (soy sauce) in your soy sauce plate.
Dip a small amount of wasabi, the mountain grown Japanese
horseradish, between the tips of your chopsticks and pick
up a single slice of fish between the tips. Dip only the
edge of your fish into the shoyu and eat in one mouthful.
As with sushi (fish with rice), more than a touch of shoyu
overwhelms the pure flavor and upsets the delicate balance
of tastes. The flavors may initially seem subtle, but they
will soon emerge in the most pleasing ways.
Occasionally
take a small piece of gari (pickled ginger) to refresh the
palette and set up your taste buds for the next kind of
fish. The sharp, slightly sweet and sour ginger will overwhelm
the tastes in your mouth, so take your time and enjoy the
flavors of the fish. Use the gari sparingly and resist mixing
it directly with our sushi or sashimi as it wipes out the
flavor of the fish. Sushi will sometimes arrive ungarnished.
For these pieces, dip the edge of the fish or roll into
shoyu, again only applying a small amount as an accent.
Don't let the rice become saturated with the shoyu and save
the gari for between bites. And eat the entire piece of
sushi at once. While it might initially seem awkward to
take the entire piece of sushi into your mouth at once,
remember that Sapporo structures our portions for your individual
mouth. Taking the whole piece at once means the flavors,
textures and aromas intersect fully and at their best.
Everything
is from scratch and changes daily. While Sapporo brings
in fresh fish from all around the world and much from Japan,
we highly value good domestic fish. We select the fish by
evaluating each for freshness, size and its "spirit"
or "energy". We also control the aging process
of our fish - an essential part of making sushi. "Just-caught"
fish is not always ideal for being eaten immediately as
sushi, and different fish require different methods of refrigeration
and storage for preservation and taste
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