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Fish TalesTalking sushi with Trevor Corson and Sasha Issenberg.

By Sara DickermanPosted Friday, July 6, 2007, at 2:20 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

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When Dickerman was pregnant, she wrote that certain foods, like sushi, started to freak her out. She's also become a pragmatist when it comes to frozen foods, including sushi. Bryan Curtis explored salmon's identity crisis, and Douglas Gantenbein called salmon farming methods into question. Amanda Schaffer examined the mercury exposure standards for tuna.

Slate: Sasha, you really questioned the idea of fixed sushi tradition—of sushi's arcadian past. Sushi has always had outside influences—even traditional nigiri sushi was influenced heavily by American taste during the occupation.

Issenberg: Yes, I think there's this myth—not only with sushi but with most food—that there's this path that existed before commerce and global influence. To some degree, the slow-food movement embraces this idea that we can return to a pure moment in our food past. But if you look at the story of sushi, it never existed without commerce. It started with fast food and the big commercial industrial city, Tokyo, in the mid-19^th century. It grew as Tokyo became the capital of one of the world's dominant economic powers. Tuna was worthless to the Japanese—especially the fatty cuts that are now the most prized—until the postwar period. Then, the Japanese, during the American occupation, were introduced to the idea that their occupiers were bringing in red meat—beef—which had never been seen as part of the Japanese diet.

Corson: There's a story in my book about how the U.S. military occupation authorities were the ones who took Tokyo-style sushi and spread it all over Japan, setting the stage for sushi as we know it to spread around the world.

Slate: How specifically did L.A. become this center of sushi in America in the '60s and '70s?

Corson: Sasha's book contains some very interesting information about the evolution of Japanese food in Little Tokyo, and I tell the story of a particular gentleman—I think Sasha mentions this, too—named Noritoshi Kanai, who was looking for a way to expand the business of the important Japanese foodstuffs for Americans. No one had considered sushi because they thought it would be too disgusting for Americans to try. I believe the story is that he was on a business trip back in Japan with an American colleague, and they went out to eat sushi. The American colleague went crazy for it. That was sort of the "Eureka" moment. Once Hollywood celebrities caught on, it got a whole new life.

Issenberg: The first wave of sushi bars in Los Angeles were catering to the new Japanese money there—the sort of places where special occasions and business meetings were celebrated. It took some part of a generation to move into something that's offered in a kind of fast food version—as opposed to, say, tacos, which started in ethnic enclaves as an inexpensive accessible food, and now a generation or two later, you see the gourmet Mexican version. The first people to eat sushi were having it at its most refined.

Slate: One of the reasons I think sushi translates well in the United States is because it has a certain similarity to steakhouse culture—the rich meats, the minimal emphasis on sides, and it also caters to male business clientele. There's also this interesting element of eating sushi where you quantify your food—keeping track of ounces or the number of pieces of nigiri you're eating. What's your take on the gestalt of sushi?

Issenberg: In Japan, it really is comparable to steakhouse culture. But in the United States, even though it's overwhelmingly produced by men, it seems a disproportionately feminine experience, and I actually think sushi bars are a far more feminized space than the steakhouse. In the '70s and '80s, when we had sort of a national diet culture emerge, sushi was a perfect way to satisfy that while still being an adventurous diner.

Corson: The flip side of that feminine thing, though, is that maybe there's a kind of masculine macho aspect to eating sushi. Certainly at the beginning, when people like Yul Brenner started eating sushi in Hollywood, it was a dramatic, exotic kind of macho thing to do. You got points for trying something that was different and potentially disgusting to the average palate. I do think we've maybe tricked ourselves a little bit, calories-wise. Sushi is not that much healthier than a lot of the stuff we usually eat. In my book, I mention going to the supermarket and getting a frozen pizza and a California roll: They had the same number of calories per serving.

Slate: How healthy is it to eat sushi? These days, is there any control for, say, mercury in the buying process for the sushi market?

Issenberg: By and large there are very few people that test fish for mercury before they distribute it. There's an absolute absence of information, and there's no transparency whatsoever in the business. Fish often passes through so many hands before it gets to you, even a well-meaning chef might not know where his fish came from—what country, which ocean, how long it's been out of water, if it's fresh, if it's been frozen at all. It can go through 10 different hands. All the rich menu language we get about our lettuce—where it's from and when it was harvested—you never get that when you order sushi. The opportunity to talk with the sushi chef as you are ordering, as you're eating, that's the opportunity to make that last link in the global chain work for you. That's what diners should be looking for—that trusting relationship with your chef, more than asking any particular question about what's been tested, because it might be that the chef won't know.

Corson: I think the sushi chefs are behind the curve on this whole question of ecological impact and health. The next big wave of high-end sushi is going to be environmental health and awareness among chefs. You're just starting to see this now. There are seafood restaurants popping up that are selling only sustainably harvested fish.

Our definition of the highest end of sushi has come to be these fatty red-meat cuts of fish like the fatty tuna and the fatty salmon. And the PCBs in mercury are particularly related to the question of fat. We should recognize that our cultish obsession with these melt-in-your-mouth cuts of rich fish like tuna and salmon are not traditional sushi at all. Going back to our discussion of early sushi—the real kings of sushi in the old days were these lighter, leaner-fleshed fish like sea bream and flounder, which have more consistency, more chewiness, more interesting, subtle flavors, and a lot less fat in most cases.

Chefs who are experienced can suggest a lot of other interesting kinds of fish to eat besides the usual tuna and salmon. And that can also perhaps have better consequences on the health and sustainability fronts.

To me, the great thing about sushi is the experience of trusting the chef, and letting them pick for you. That conflicts with this impulse we all have to know exactly where all our food came from. But there's going to have to be some negotiating between customers and chefs in the world of sushi in the next few years to hammer that out.