Who's number one?
Believe it or not, the most popular tuna in the world is not the noble bluefin. It is not the formidable yellowfin, nor is it the rocket-powered albacore. Believe it or not, the most popular tuna is in the world is a small, maroon-fleshed bullet of a fish that is not even in the same genus as the aforementioned three musketeers. I’m speaking, of course, of the humble katsuwonus pelamis – the skipjack tuna.
That would be me
Even though it’s exceedingly rare to encounter skipjack tuna in a white-tablecloth restaurant, and even though you and I will probably never see at skipjack fillets at our local grocery store seafood counter, this fish is king when it comes to tuna sales. If you were to total up all the tuna yanked out of the oceans in a single year, the majority of that mammoth catch would be composed of skipjack. So if it’s not in the back kitchens of our restaurants, and it’s not lying atop the crushed ice beds our seafood merchants’ display cases, where is it?
As delicious as skipjack can be — anyone who has had a properly prepared katsuo tataki knows exactly what I mean — the vast majority of the world’s skipjack ends up ignominiously smashed into bits, flash-cooked into oblivion, and sealed in a can. Canned skipjack tends to be a unpalatable, low-value product that relies on cheap production methods. If it is to turn a profit, it must be produced in a manner that is excruciatingly effective (just as a thermonuclear strike is an effective way of, say, unclogging a sink drain.)
Purse seine: circle of death
To this end, skipjack tuna is caught almost exclusively through the use of industrial purse seiners. A purse seine is a type of net which, like its eponymous accessory, is basically a goodie bag with a closing mechanism. Purse seine nets are dropped into the water and maneuvered around a school of fish, and then a drawstring is pulled which closes the net and draws it tight around its catch. The fish are compressed together, and the unfortunate animals along the sides are sliced to ribbons by the taut ropes of the net. As the catch is hauled out of the water in a tight silvery ball, the seine net literally rains blood.
The main issue that we are facing when it comes to purse seining is the use of something called a fish aggregating device (FAD). FADs are floating objects that are thrown into the water in order to provide structure and shade in the open ocean. They can be anything that floats and provides shade — from sophisticated mega-buoys with sonar and radio capabilities to half-rotten doors plucked from garbage heaps behind ramshackle fishing villages.
Fish magnet
Small fish are attracted to FADs, and they in turn attract larger fish, which attract larger fish, and so on. FADs are popular among purse seiners because they concentrate fish into a small area. Having all the fish together in one place decreases the amount of effort necessary for a given ship to capture its quarry.
Unfortunately, FADs don’t only attract tuna. Many other animals are also attracted to the shade and the presence of forage fish. Because of this, purse seiners that use FADs tend to incur much higher levels of bycatch than their non-FAD counterparts. Tuna seiners employing FADs regularly haul up immature yellowfin and bigeye tuna, sharks, marine mammals, and other unfortunate animals caught in their nets. Only the tiniest fraction of these non-target organisms survive the grisly, gore-soaked process of being caught in a purse seine net.
Industrial purse seiners are causing tremendous problems for the health of the ocean. Not only is the fishing capacity of these rapacious behemoths beyond the productivity potential of the targeted skipjack populations, but they slaughter hundreds of thousands of other animals in the process through the use of FADs. If we are to offer some respite to these creatures, we must forbid the use of FADs in the world’s oceans. To put it simply — this carnage must be stopped. Unfortunately, this all takes places in the middle of the open ocean, thousands of miles from prying eyes.
Rainbow warriors
In order convince the relevant policy-making bodies (national governments, international management bodies, etc) that FADs must be banned, we must have thorough documentation of their devastating impact. With that in mind, the captain and crew of Greenpeace’s Esperanza is plying the waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean in an effort to confront these purse seiners and gather proof of their actions.
And I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to come along.
I will be joining the Esperanza as the on-board campaigner for this tour. I fly to Tahiti tomorrow to meet the ship, and will be at sea until early December. The ship is fully internet capable, and I will endeavor to provide regular updates in addition to my standard sushi-related blogging. So please keep checking back; hopefully I’ll have some good stories for you.
This FAD must end
I haven’t been to sea for any significant length of time for over three years, and I’m a bit nervous… but this is a fantastic opportunity and a worthy cause. After writing so many blog entries and articles about the plight of the world’s tuna, this is a welcome chance to give my pen a rest and get back in the action. The battle against FADs is tremendously important, and I’m truly flattered to be given this opportunity to spend some time on the front lines.
I’ll send pictures.
This article continues in a subsequent post.
Tags: aggregate, aggregating, bluefin, canned tuna, esperanza, FAD, greenpeace, purse seine, seine, skipjack, tahiti, yellowfin
Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar was the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the United States. When it opened in February 2008, however, it was to deafening silence from the culinary scene. Little money was available to spend on advertising and fanfare; chef/owners Kin Lui and Raymond Ho had already put themselves deep in debt merely through attending to the bare necessities that came with opening a restaurant. Although I was lucky enough to be involved in concept and development, I certainly wasn’t able to bring any money to the table.
The vision behind the restaurant was simple – to prove that sushi and ocean conservation did not necessarily run at odds in one another, and that in fact one could do honor to the art form and hold true to the pursuit of excellence that is part and parcel of the cuisine, while at the same time respecting and nurturing the bounty of our oceans.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Not in our house
There were some major challenges right out of the gate. The five most popular sushi items in the United States – open-containment farmed salmon, farmed shrimp, longlined yellowfin tuna, farmed Japanese amberjack, and ranched freshwater eel were all unequivocally unsustainable choices. They all had to go, as did the biggest moneymaker of them all: bluefin tuna.
An even bigger challenge has been the lack of a full kitchen. Tataki has had to cope with this since day one. Frankly, though, it has only served to show how much more a hypothetical sustainable sushi chef could do with a full suite of tools.
The Tataki menu has evolved over time, but not a single one of the aforementioned products has ever blemished its pages. This has been a struggle in some ways, but in others, it’s actually proven surprisingly easy. An example? Replacing farmed salmon.
I can't believe it's not eel!
Since farmed salmon was never an option for us, Tataki has always offered arctic char in its place. We expected some degree of resistance from our customers, but it has never materialized. The char was instantly popular among our diners and to this day remains one of the restaurant’s best sellers. We bring in wild Alaskan salmon as well, but as this is a seasonal product, it is a delicacy that we are not able to offer on a daily basis.
Eel was replaced with faux-nagi, Chef Kin Lui’s brainchild. This sablefish-based dish delivers the deep, dusky sweetness and fatty texture of unagi, but doesn’t rely on an overfished product.
The chefs eschew bluefin toro in favor of the sweet, supple belly flesh of local pole-and-line albacore. Hamachi was never an option either, due to the state of stocks and the rapacity of the industry. Instead, Tataki’s offers farmed Hawaiian kanpachi (as well as wild amberjack, depending on the season.)
Welcome back, vegans
Tataki also boasts a thorough vegetarian selection. It seemed to us that vegetarians had been severely marginalized when it came to sushi — how many cucumber rolls can you eat before the experience becomes unbearably mundane? Moreover, vegetarians are, by definition, sustainable seafood supporters insofar as they would never order bluefin, eel, farmed salmon, or other dangerous options. Kin and Raymond put a tremendous amount of thought into designing a menu that offers both vegetarians and vegans alike a plethora of animal-free delights.
The vast majority of Tataki’s customers are thrilled about the options. Sure, we have the odd one or two patrons that lament our lack of unagi or toro, but we’ve found that the gains vastly outweigh the losses.
While the restaurant’s popularity has continued to grow, nothing could have prepared us for a recent event that both flattered and humbled us to no end. In its October 5th issue, Time Magazine declared Raymond, Kin and myself “Environmental Heroes of the Year” in honor of our work with sustainable sushi.
Our little corner of the industry
As ecstatic as we are about this award, it is actually our hope that our little operation will soon be forgotten amidst the dozens, even hundreds, of other restaurants and grocery stores that make the switch to a more responsible method of selling sushi. A niche restaurant may command a distinct market share, but it will not change the world; it cannot save the oceans. A vanguard restaurant, however, defines itself by the slow demise of its individuality. We at Tataki will know that we’ve succeeded in our mission when, from an environmental perspective, there is nothing to distinguish us from any other sushi bar.
The concept of sustainability is ballooning within the public consciousness, and with each passing day, the ideals of a sustainable lifestyle penetrate further into our daily existence. For all of us in the Tataki family, it has been and continues to be a true honor to play a role in the development of sustainable sushi.
Tags: albacore, bar, bluefin, casson, diners, eel, environmental hero, fauxnagi, hamachi, ho, kanpachi, kin, lui, raymond, restaurant, salmon, shrimp, sushi, sustainable, Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar, time, trenor, tuna, vanguard, vegan, vegetarian
It's a long hard road
As sustainable sushi begins to gain a foothold in the United States, it makes sense to do a quick recap of how far we’ve come.
When you look at the headlines, it is easy to feel disheartened. Traditionalists and high-end restaurants are seeing Industry staples like bluefin tuna under threat of extinction. On the other end of the spectrum, unsustainable aquaculture and overfishing are compounded as sushi continues to backslide into the realm of quick-fix fast food.
For example, take the ubiquitous Genki Sushi, which wraps its tentacles around the globe like Kraken attacking a Norse longship. The robotic sushi giant has long dominated Japan and Hawaii, but new installations have recently popped up in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. The company has even managed to establish a presence on contiguous American soil, with restaurants opening their doors in New York and, most recently, Seattle. Genki is not aimed at delivering a white-tablecloth sushi experience, but rather a quick in-and-out power lunch revolving around a gimmicky network of robots and converyor belts.
Greed on the high seas
This kind of mass-produced sushi tends to draw from mechanized fishing, as it demands large amounts of cheap fish that can be sold in massive quantities for acceptable prices. Factory trawling operations take advantage of economies of scale by ripping staggering amounts of fish and shellfish biomass out of our oceans in single swoops. This keeps their operation costs down and allows them to undercut other fishermen in the marketplace. Fast food sushi relies on these marine rapists – otherwise, how are they going to sell two pieces of nigiri for $2.25 and make a profit?
(I should mention that a Genki has recently announced a plan to begin incorporating seasonal and loval seafood and vegetables into their restaurant menus. This is theoretically fabulous news, but I’m going to hold off on the fireworks until I have more information. More on this in the next few weeks – hopefully Genki will respond to my interview request.)
It's a start
Parenthetical caveats aside, the point of this somber introduction is not to reiterate this depressing state of affairs, but rather to highlight those few pioneers who have lit beacons in the darkness. Indeed, there’s no time like the present for an examination of the resounding successes that the sustainable sushi movement has enjoyed in the face of this creeping malaise.
This serial piece will examine the current status of the three known sustainable sushi restaurants that are currently operating in North America: Bamboo Sushi, Mashiko, and Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar. I will certainly include other restaurants if appropriate.
Perhaps the best thing I can do to foster the growth of this list is to expound a bit on the triumphs and setbacks of these restaurants. Each of them has adopted a different business model and interpreted sustainability in a different way, and thus they have engendered their own opportunities and challenges.
It is my hope that these articles will encourage other sushi chefs and entrepreneurs to entertain the idea of moving towards sustainability themselves. Many thanks to Sushihound for providing me with the idea for this piece.
Tags: bamboo, chef, fast food, genki, genki sushi, mashiko, restaurant, robot, strip mall, sustainability, Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar, trawler, vanguard
I’m not usually the kind of person that would look at a scrap piece of wood too closely. It wouldn’t catch my attention, and even if it did, I doubt I’d see more than its potential utility in construction or value to a beach bonfire.
Of course, that changed after I met Adeleine Daysor.
Daysor, 28, is a relatively new presence in the US art scene, having only recently arrived here from her home country of Singapore. She uses pieces of scrap wood to create abstract sculptures that are largely open to interpretation, and then marries them to food. It’s an odd relationship, and one that I didn’t fully understand at first, but have come to genuinely appreciate. The fact is, with Daysor’s art, the sculpture is really not the point at all.
Daysor gravitated to food imagery in her work because it was a way to transcend cultural differences. Even though food around the world is different, everyone in every country does have to eat. As such, there is no culture without food, nor is a there food without culture.
"Wood-crab study" (watercolor on paper)
When Daysor narrowed her focus from a broad spectrum of culinary interpretation to a more precise investigation of sushi and seafood, she was reacting to the materials she encountered rather than attempting to manifest an image that had already developed in her mind. The pieces of wood that later would become the physical presence of her pieces imposed themselves upon her imagination, rather than the other way around. What makes Daysor unique is that she strives to allow her viewers this same opportunity.
“I saw a crab in this block of wood, but someone else may see something different,” Daysor explains to me, “but not if I place my watercolor of the crab directly next to the wood block. Then it’s a crab to everyone.” This kind of orchestration, Daysor claims, leaves no space for art.
"Is Everything on a plate, food? Is Everything on Rice, Sushi? Is Everything on a hook, Fish?" (scrap wood and cooked rice)
This is one of the most interesting aspects of Daysor’s work. She does not consider her sculpture, watercolor, or mixed media to be her art in its final sense. Rather, the products of her effort are the images and emotions that the physical props conjure in an observer’s mind. This approach lends itself to a feeling of fluidity and open-endedness that is often missing from the work of many artists. Daysor seems to view the pieces she creates as stepping stones in a longer path of the viewer’s understanding or realization. “A lot of what I’m dealing with is the history of items, objects, things,” she says. “I put them together in different combinations that become an object, and that object starts its own history. Objects are like culture, they evolve and change, but there’s always an origin, and I want people to think about that.”
"Afternoon Tea" (mixed media)
Daysor’s shows are interactive events. They combine a smattering of actual, edible food with her sculptures and paintings, all of which depictions of food in various degrees of abstraction. With little or no explanation given, Daysor’s show is similar to a zen initiate’s first taste of koan meditation. In her effort to create fertile ground for personal reflection and interpretation, Daysor offers no guidance as to how the pieces should be approached or interpreted. The audience is immediately confronted with a pronounced sense of insecurity.
There are paintings on the wall, but are they related to the sculptures on the pedestals? If so, why aren’t they displayed together? Not to mention — there is an abundance of edible food mixed in with the artwork, but is it supposed to be eaten? Is the food being wasted? What would happen if I ate it?
"Salmon Log Cake" (mixed media)
Daysor smiles when I ask her about this. “The first time the salmon log cake [a sculpture that flanks slices of real salmon with two pieces of wood that masquerade as salmon] was displayed, I offered it to be eaten, and people ate it. Second time, I didn’t say no but didn’t say yes either, and no one ate it.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “I think they didn’t eat it because the real food next to the constructed objects puts food outside its natural context. Also, it’s playing with the rules – people don’t know if they can eat it, or should eat it, etc.”
Daysor allows these questions to bloom in the minds of her viewers and to play themselves out in a natural progression. Sometimes the food in her shows is consumed, sometimes it’s not. To Daysor, this is the core of her art. Without free interpretation and participation to give depth to the piece, the work is merely two-dimensional.
"Wood-prawn study" (watercolor on paper)
To me, Daysor’s work echoes one of the most fascinating aspects of sushi, seafood, and the ocean in general: the sense of limitless potential and possibility. The monsters that coil about the edges of ancient mariner’s maps were spawned from the same place that Daysor is urging her viewers to return to. The reflective sheen atop the world’s oceans provides an optimal setting to nurture the imagination. What incredible creatures and undiscovered treasures lie beneath the waves?
Daysor’s work encourages us to believe in the wondrous nature of our world. In order to ignite a passion for the ocean, one must truly believe in its magnificence. The depth and mystery of the ocean is indeed indescribable, but we have largely allowed this awe to be supplanted by more pedestrian interpretations of the ocean (like fish sticks, for example.)
What do you see?
It doesn’t matter if I see the same thing that you see in a given piece of wood or a passing cloud. What matters is that we open ourselves to whatever blossoms in our imagination. I am not satisfied with the idea that the entire world will be force-fed a single interpretation of our ocean. As I said — that way lies fish sticks.
We need our passion, our hope, and our powers of imagination all operating at full capacity if we are to save our planet. We need the ability to visualize an answer, to work together, and to believe in ourselves. We have to challenge the paradigm that got us into this mess, and anyone that can use a forlorn, castaway piece of wood to fuel their creativity is on the right track.
Tags: adeleine, adeleine daysor, art, crab, culture, daysor, display, fish sticks, food, interactive, rice, salmon, scrap, sculpture, singapore, sushi, watercolor, wood
Nice to meat you
One of the little joys of the sushi dining experience is the rapport that one builds with the chef. Unique among major North American cuisines, sushi offers a customer the opportunity to dine in a face-to-face setting with those behind the sushi bar. In addition to watching the masterful knife-play that is involved with the proper preparation of one’s mixed sashimi plate or order of kohada nigiri, it affords us an all-too-uncommon experience in modern America: the chance to get to know the person who is feeding us.
Closed kitchen
Consider our other restaurant dining options. It is exceedingly rare to find oneself in a non-Japanese eating establishment wherein one has the choice to sit directly before the executive chef and interact with him (over 95% of sushi chefs in the United States are men… but that’s the subject of a different post) throughout the meal. Try to find a French restaurant where the chef prepares your coq au vin tableside, or a California fusion joint that seats you next to the line cook so you can chat while he sets you up with your steamed halibut with Napa cabbage and mango salsa.
Only in the sushi world are we treated to this intimate experience of dining in the company of the chef. The irony of this situation, however, is that even though sushi diners have the opportunity to connect with the architect of the dishes they enjoy, they are often more removed than ever from the real star of the show — the fish itself.
Sushi does not typically present itself to us as fish. When it arrives at the table, it has been artfully sliced and diced, festooned with ornamental seaweeds and vegetables, and cradled by softly interwoven granules of rice. It’s a magnificent creation: a delightful dining experience that enraptures the eyes as well as the taste buds… but at what cost? Is there a price to pay for perfection in presentation?
Possibly.
I've got a secret
The oceans are under threat from overfishing, pollution and trash dumping, bottom trawling, and more. One of the reasons that these practices are allowed to continue is that the realm of the aquatic is separated from our perception by our inability of human vision to pierce the waves. What lies beneath the ocean’s surface is nothing as much as a deep and fascinating mystery. If we could bear quotidian witness to the damage wrought by our actions, would we still behave this way?
No one here but us flowers
It is difficult for us to offer fish the respect they deserve when we are unable to perceive them as living, breathing animals that have unique characteristics and habits, that form an integral part of an ecosystem that we are only just beginning to comprehend. In the context of sushi, these fish — many of which have never been seen by the vast majority of Americans in any form other than sliced to ribbons — are not presented as animals, but rather as an assortment of delectable morsels in a culinary tapestry woven together for our sensual pleasure.
So how do we surmount this obstacle? Part of saving the oceans is building awareness of the impacts of our choices, so how can we enjoy sushi while maintaining a connection to the fish that gave its life for our meal?
The secret is right in front of us.
Stay tuned.
Tags: art, chef, cuisine, culture, eye, itadakimsu, kitchen, kohada, presentation, respect, sushi, sushi bar, sushi chef
Alicia Escott: Artist, visionary, and trash collector
Most artists that use sushi imagery have purposefully selected the cuisine as something they want to incorporate into their artwork. Something unique to sushi piqued their interest and compelled them to explore it from their own unique perspective. Alicia Escott, however, began her interaction with the sushi world completely through happenstance.
A graduate of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, Escott began her art career as a plein air painter, but soon found herself unsatisfied. An activist at heart, Escott painted her pieces with an environmentalist bent, but didn’t feel that her viewers were interpreting it that way. Frustrated by this, Escott all but abandoned her painting and moved to San Francisco, intending to turn her back on her artistic side in favor of developing a career in sustainable business. This was not to be, however – perhaps the fates weren’t about to allow such a talented artist to rob us of a gift that we so desperately needed.
Looking for work and struggling to make ends meet, Escott found herself working at a grocery store that happened to house a sushi counter. At the end of the day, the sushi that hadn’t been sold was distributed to hungry workers or thrown out. This is the moment where Escott came face-to-face with her future medium – discarded plastic.
"Pitch" (oil on plastic)
Escott saw potential in incorporating this cast-off material into her work, and began to create energetic seascapes and vibrant animal imagery as her paint splayed across the matte black plastic cradle of someone’s rainbow roll. Over time, Escott hit her stride and her work blossomed, belting out undeniable messages about the not-so-disposable nature of all that which we dismiss as “disposable.” Her work drives home the staggering reality of the truth behind grocery sushi packaging: the fact that a hungry Safeway patron’s nigiri combo has a life expectancy of about 20 minutes, while the container holding it – whose ostensible purpose was solely to custodian the fish and rice to their grisly end – will likely persist for tens of thousands of years.
- “A New Day” (oil on plastic)
Escott has utilized a number of different techniques in her work, including oils, pencil, and ink. Many of her pieces are composed on single pieces of plastic, while others, like her mind-boggling “A New Day,” are arranged on large grids — in this case, a rising sun and seascape splashing across thirty discarded sushi containers.
According to Escott, sushi has achieved an important place in her consciousness. “Fish really exemplify what I’m trying to communicate,” she says. “Consumers don’t know where they’re from, how they got here, or where they go… just like plastic.”
"Drawing of the last wild California grizzly bear. 'Spotted several times in 1923 in Sequoia National Park and then never seen again.' Drawn on plastic mattress bags from Cisco Home for Sustainable Living. 'Handcrafted Furniture made in LA since 1992.' This drawing is slowly fading into obscurity. The plastic is currently not locally recyclable." (ink on plastic)
That’s not to say that Escott’s expertise is limited to this little wasabi-and-soy universe. She has a repertoire that draws on plastic in a multitude of forms, from discarded plastic bags and disposable containers to entire heavy-duty plastic sheets, every scrap of which was thrown away by its original owner.
In fact, packaging in all forms, even beyond the tangible, intrigue her and draw from her imagination a myriad of poignant and groundbreaking pieces. “Our whole lives are packaged,” Escott laments. “Even a national park is ‘packaged’ in a way to make it accessible and appreciable… plastic is the epitome of this, you know? It’s at once the most hygienic and the most ‘dirty’ thing.”
"Salmon roll" (ink on plastic)
To express her perspective on the concepts of waste and packaging from a broader sense, Escott has created both massive and minuscule works, dwelling on detail and, most importantly, the ironic connection between her imagery and her material. She pours countless hours of work into the artistic amelioration of items that most people would leave crushed and forgotten in a garbage can or on a city sidewalk. In one of her pieces, several meticulously hand-rendered salmon struggle up a river that rushes along the creases of a crushed, discarded sushi lid. The plastic still bears a faded sticker that reads: “Salmon roll.” The salmon are frozen in time, rolling through whitewater that has been superimposed on the molted shell of one of their long-eaten relatives – a fish that, through the dubious miracle of plastic, has been frozen in time as well.
"Untitled" (ink on plastic)
The impact of this juxtaposition is redoubled by Escott’s masterful ability to convey a critical message: this plastic waste is a tremendous threat to the health of oceanic ecosystems. As discarded plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, it forms “nurdles” – tiny particles that are invisible to the naked eye but that have the potential to persist in our environment for thousands of years. Nurdles find their way into streams and rivers which bear then onward until they reach the ocean. These microscopic poison pellets then saturate our waters and are subsequently devoured by unsuspecting filter-feeders. Countless animals are killed by nurdles ever year, starving to death, unable to fit any digestible food into their full stomachs. They are packed to the gills, as it were, with plastic.
When confronted about the true purpose of her work, Escott gets a impish look and the corner of her mouth curls up mischeviously. “I want to confuse the viewer,” she confesses. “I want to bring home this cognitive dissonance between the disposable and the perpetual. We at once accept these containers as ‘disposable,’ but at the same time, we’re aware that they will be around for thousands of years.”
Well, I’m certainly confused. As I write this, I’m about 30,000 feet above the Nevada desert, and I’ve just finished eating. My food was, predictably, encased in a black-and-clear disposable plastic service, #1 PET plastic on #6 polystyrene, accompanied by the ubiquitous clear plastic airline cup. But now that I’m finished with my meal, what do I do with the plastic? I ponder my situation, turning the problem over and over in my head. Given the continual failure among domestic airlines to incorporate recycling programs into their policies, anything I hand to the flight attendant for disposal is a strong candidate for nurdle-dom. So how can I ensure that this anachronistic reminder of a fruit and cheese plate that I barely tasted doesn’t contribute to the demise of our planet? How can I put the incredible longevity and persistence of my food’s erstwhile shield to good use?
I guess I’ll give it to Alicia.
Tags: a new day, alicia, art, bear, chicago, culture, escott, foods, grocery, ink, lid, nurdle, oil, pencil, PET, pitch, plastic, plein air, polystyrene, roll, safeway, salmon, san francisco, whole
A simple truth of sushi is that it tends to involve fish. A second simple truth is that, before they were nigiri or maki, these fish were living, breathing creatures. Strangely, this latter axiom seems to pass unnoticed all too often.
Luckily, we have Gayle to remind us.
The gifted and lovely Gayle Wheatley.
Gayle Wheatley is a well-known artist based in the Los Angeles area. She is supremely talented and works in an impressive array of media, including oil on canvas, illustration, and graphic design. Her work is displayed in numerous exhibitions and galleries around the world, and much of it has been snapped up by art collectors who lamentably discovered her before I did.
Gayle spent two years living in Japan, and I’m guessing that this is at least part of what has inspired her to use sushi imagery in her work. What interests me about Gayle’s art is her uncanny ability to depict the connection between sushi and life.
I often find myself waxing on ad naseum about this subject: fish are alive. Until they die, that is. Or we kill them.
This in itself isn’t a problem for me; rather, I’m concerned by the dubious understanding that we have of this connection on a subconscious level. Consciously, sure, we know the sashimi on our plate is fish… but do we stop and think about how it was a fish, as well?
- We are hamachi.
Picture this: you walk into your favorite sushi restaurant. You order hamachi. You wait a few minutes, maybe savoring a steaming cup of green tea or sipping Sapporo from a pilsner glass. A moment passes and a modest but smiling server approaches your table, places a small wooden block before you, and vanishes. On the block, resting softly on a shizo leaf, are two loosely-molded lumps of rice topped with a couple of pieces of a rich, cream-colored flesh with light veins of red and pink streaking through it. It is a beautiful dish, rich in its simplicity, evoking thoughts of freshness, purity, and delight.
What it doesn’t make us think of is a fish.
- But I was hamachi first.
Hamachi is a staple in the US sushi industry, but it is exceedingly rare in other sectors of our seafood landscape. You won’t find hamachi at your local Safeway, WalMart, or Kroger; nor will you see one resting in the crushed ice of a high-end independent urban seafood market. In fact, outside of a sushi bar, most Americans will never encounter a hamachi at all.
Which means most sushi-goers have no idea what the living fish actually looks like.
I find that it’s difficult to connect with something of which I have no tangible or visual appreciation, and fish are no exception. These gaps between us and the animals that we consume allow us to feed upon them with less regard for what they once were. Harmful fishing practices, filthy farming conditions, and even the ugly faces and off-putting monikers of particular fish are hidden to foster our ability to purchase in blissful ignorance at the point of sale. Why else would merchants decide to change the name of the Patagonian toothfish to the Chilean seabass? Or market the slimehead as “orange roughy”?
(Speaking of that, have you ever seen a whole, head-on Chilean seabass displayed in a fish counter? No? Maybe it’s because they look like this.)
This is a point of concern for me. In my view, it is missing the point to work towards sustainability in the fish industry if we do not reconcile our eating habits with the fact that fish are living creatures, not an amorphous commodity. As long as we continue to to treat these animals as less than that (farming them in unsuitable conditions, filling them with drugs and dyes, devastating their habitat with destructive fishing gear, etc.), we will continually find ourselves struggling to reach sustainability.
Gayle has managed to use sushi to portray these undersea organisms as the vivacious, mysterious, beating-heart marvels that they are. Her vibrant, almost monstrous depictions of the animals “behind the sushi” strikes a chord with me. Salmon roe sport teeth, similar to those they would have developed had they been allowed to hatch and mature. A clutch of eels writhe and squirm against a nori yoke, struggling mightily to escape a hackneyed kabeyaki fate. Cold- or warm-blooded, exo- or endo-skeletal, shelled or scaled, pelagic or benthic… it makes no difference. Gayle’s work ably demonstrates that all of the ocean’s inhabitants merit our reverence, as does the amazingly complex ecosystem that they compose.
It’s not about refusing to eat fish. It’s about bringing our awareness of what we are actually eating to the table. Once the information is present, we can make defensible decisions as to what is right for us as individuals. We can clearly delineate for ourselves what we will and will not consume. This kind of consumption works in harmony with our own personal ethics, and I promise, fish tastes so much better that way.
Tags: amberjack, art, eel, gayle, gayle wheatley, hamachi, ikura, illustrations, maguro, octopus, salmon, salmon roe, sushi, Sushi culture, tako, tuna, unagi, wheatley
That's me, being a sushi fanatic.
By this time, I think it has become pretty clear that I’m a bit of a sushi fanatic. I really dig the stuff… to the degree where I spend a great deal of my day blogging about it to an audience which may or may not even exist. I suppose that’s saying something about my life (or lack thereof), but hey, we’ve all got our jobs to do. This one is mine.
Anyhow, sushi. Yeah, I’m a fan. And as much as I enjoy relishing the experience of a sushi meal, it’s not just the cuisine itself that fascinates me. Fish and rice aside, the culture(s) of sushi is, in itself, a marvelously captivating subject, and in my view, one which is particularly interesting when examined through the lens of sustainability.
There is no singular sushi culture. The cuisine has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, each with its own proprietary traditions and norms. From “traditional” edomae sushi culture in Japan to the futuristic conveyor-belt hamachi and unagi delivery systems employed in urban centers around the globe, the concept of sushi has mutated and transcended itself in countless ways.
One of the most interesting aspects of the diffusion of sushi into global popular culture is the emergence of “sushi art.” Dozens, maybe hundreds, of spectacularly talented artists have begun to incorporate sushi into their work. Mediums as varied as concrete sculpture, watercolors, and even discarded plastic have been used by these visionaries to evoke images of sashimi, maki, and more.
This upcoming series of blog entries will be an exploration of the use of sushi as an artistic theme, and will focus on how this artwork can be interpreted from an environmental perspective. It is meant to provoke a discussion on these themes, so please, comment freely.
Links to subsequent installments:
Part 1: Fish, Life, and Gayle Wheatley (May 2, 2009)
Part 2: The Plastic World of Alicia Escott (June 2, 2009)
Tags: art, culture, painting, plastic, Sushi culture, watercolor
