The counter is narrow, a single length of pale hinoki wood with eight or ten seats along it. A chef presses rice in the palm, lays a slice of fish over it, brushes the surface with a soy glaze and sets the piece down with the smallest forward movement. It is lifted while the rice is still warm against the fingers, and by the time it has been eaten the chef has the next one in hand.
Nothing stands between the chef and the guest but the width of the wood. The rice tub, the case of fish, the knife wiped clean after every cut are all in plain view, and a guest at a serious counter watches every decision made on their behalf.
where it began
Where the counter began
The style now served at the best counters traces to a specific stall and a specific decade. Hanaya Yohei, who lived from 1799 to 1858, is credited with the fast, hand-pressed nigiri he began serving at Ryogoku in Edo in 1824: a small mound of vinegared rice topped with a slice of fish, pressed together by hand and eaten at once, made for a crowded city and not for a banquet. It caught on quickly, because it fed a great many hungry people in little time, and Yohei's business grew from a box carried on his back to a stall and then to a shop of his own, which traded under his name until 1932.
The rice carried a second, less visible invention. Rice vinegar was costly through the Edo period, and many stalls turned instead to akazu, a red vinegar made from sake lees aged for several years, which was cheaper despite its long maturing. Its deeper colour and rounder acidity became one of the two marks of Edomae sushi properly understood. The other is the separate handling given to each fish, cured, marinated, simmered or salted according to its kind. Refrigeration has long since removed the need, and the handling has survived because it makes the fish taste better.
The seated counter is younger than the nigiri. Yohei's sushi was eaten standing, and most of the sushi of Edo and early Tokyo was sold from street stalls. The Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 destroyed much of Tokyo and scattered its sushi chefs across the country, carrying the Edomae style to regions that had known older, slower forms, such as the pressed box sushi of Osaka. Traffic and hygiene rules thinned the street stalls through the 1930s, and after 1945 the sale of raw fish from stalls was banned outright. The chefs took the stall indoors: the plank of the cart became the fixed counter, with the chef still working from the far side of it.
rice first
Rice first
Sushi is spoken of as fish, but the counter begins with rice. Shari, the seasoned rice, decides most of what a piece is: its temperature, the character of its vinegar and salt, and how cleanly it comes apart in the mouth. A sushi chef will say that fine fish cannot rescue poor rice.
At a serious counter the rice is kept close to body temperature, and it is cooked and seasoned in batches through the evening as it cools. The grip matters as much as the warmth. Nigiri should keep its shape until it reaches the mouth and then fall apart without turning to paste; pressed too tight, the rice sits heavy, and too loose, the piece collapses on the way. A skilled hand changes the pressure with the fish, firmer under squid and lighter under fatty tuna. A dab of wasabi goes between rice and fish, and nikiri, a soy glaze, is brushed onto the top, so that the piece needs nothing more at the table.
Most of the work is done before the first guest sits down. Kohada is salted and cured in vinegar, tuna is aged for days and brought through a sequence of temperatures, octopus is simmered until it yields, and sea eel is simmered in the morning and warmed again just before it is served. The guest sees the final gesture, the press of rice and the lay of fish, and tastes the hours behind it. Texture counts as much as flavour: a fine cross-hatch of the knife turns a plain piece of squid tender and faintly sweet, and lean tuna early in the meal leaves room for the fattier cuts that come later.
the rhythm of the seat
Omakase and the rhythm of the seat
Omakase means leaving the meal to the chef. The chef sets the order and the pace and reads the guest without being asked, offering a smaller portion or a pause judged from how someone lifts a piece. The usual sequence moves from lighter fish towards richer and warmer ones and closes on eel, a hand roll or a slice of sweet tamago, though each counter runs its own course.
The season sets the sequence. Fish change through the year with spawning, water temperature and migration, so a spring counter leans on sea bream and clams, a summer one on horse mackerel and shinko, the young of kohada, and a winter one on fatty bluefin and yellowtail from the cold seas. A good chef rarely explains any of this, and the order of the pieces carries the calendar on its own.
The seat asks a small courtesy in return: eat each piece soon after it arrives, because the warmth of the rice and the crispness of the nori begin to change the moment it is set down. Fingers or chopsticks are both correct. A guest who lifts the piece gently, dips the fish and never the rice in soy, and keeps the camera away earns the chef's attention for the rest of the evening.
What a guest remembers afterwards is rarely one remarkable fish. It is the warmth of the rice, the last crispness of the nori and the short pause before the next piece is set down.
A Japan food tour, region by region →
A seat at the counter makes a fitting last evening in Japan, and The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan ends at one. The tour follows the blossom for twelve days from the palace moat in Tokyo to Osaka, where more than six hundred cherry trees stand around the castle moat. On the final evening the farewell dinner is taken at an Osaka sushi counter, each piece set down in front of the guest one at a time.
