The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice

Trevor Corson's The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice is an intimate look at the art of sushi, told from the perspective of sushi-chef candidates at the California Sushi Academy. More than that, though, it is a bit of Jiro Dreams of Sushi meets The Sushi Economy meets Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper. (Jiro even makes a few cameos in The Story of Sushi.)

Over the course of a summer, Corson follows the progress of a cohort in the California Sushi Academy. Beyond simply documenting their progress filleting fish and peeling cucumbers, though, he documents the history of sushi in Japan, as well as its evolution both in that country and throughout the west. It's no coincidence that two of the individuals he profiles are Danish and Australian. He focuses as much on the rituals of sushi preparation as he does the life, death, and mating cycles of the various creatures that become this delicacy.

Full disclosure: I really love sushi. It's probably my favorite Japanese meal, and I've lost count of the number of times I've toured Tsukiji Market. Corson still manages to make me question the wisdom of partaking in certain dishes, though, along with further pondering how some of these things became food in the first place. Also, once they became food, how they stayed food: as Corson tells it, you can catch some pretty dread diseases, man. Which I guess is why menus always warn against eating raw or under cooked seafood. But I digress.

Even more than learning about the fish and miscellaneous sea creatures, I was particularly intrigued to learn about the rice preparation. For a moment I considered actually trying to replicate the steps Corson describes, but I'll probably just settle for adding a splash of rice vinegar in the future.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and think anyone with even a minor talent for or interest in cooking would particularly like it; Corson provides sufficient detail for even the amateur chef to try some of the more basic recipes, especially those for rice, eggs, and sauces.

Four stars.