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I appreciate you checking out. Hello everyone. I'm Robbie Dorman, and this is Sarah Finazis with the podcast for Fans of Everything. Welcome.
Today, I'm joined by you, Seth Dana, to talk about sushi. We discussed our first exposure to it, the first time we tried it, and the first time we made it. We had zero dreams of sushi, the documentary available on Netflix. Sushi was an exotic food to me growing up.
So it was interesting listening to you, Seth's experience with it. It was a great talk. As always. On to this question.
Hello everyone. I'm here once again with you, Seth Dana. This we're done with the prisoner for now. Oh, geez.
You remember the thing we watched, the 2009 prisoner. That was just, that was bad. Everybody, don't watch it. That was very bad.
We're talking about food again. We're talking about sushi. Anything, I mean, we're going to talk about eating, making zero dreams of sushi, the documentary on Netflix, Sushi in general. I like sushi, is it?
I do too. Cool. That was a good podcast. Cool.
So I was going to ask you to begin. Yes. Yes. When did you first ask sushi?
I was going to ask you the same thing. I suspect we probably had similar experiences. I think it was grocery store sushi, specifically public sushi, you know, I was like, whoa, a young hippie young gunslinger in high school, had a couple dollars in my hand. Also, I didn't have a bank account, so I cashed my paycheck at Publix.
So I was there, and I was like, what's this sushi business about? I hear it sounds interesting. I've seen to remember they had it in National Lampoon's Christmas vacation, the two yuppy dinks that live next door. Do you remember them?
I think that's Julia Lou Dreyfus and man. Yes. Yes. Yes.
The more I age, the more I identify with those people. I mean, those are those are the normal people in the movie while the Chevy Jason, the kids and Beverly Gagilow. They're monsters. That whole family's monsters.
I don't like them. Yeah. I don't either. I one can only hope that like there's a horrendous gas leak in the household.
I mean, you know, they as well make it for a long time because there's like four more movies after that. Wow. So I've seen her remember them having sushi. That was probably my sort of sort of first cultural encounter with sushi that and Claire in the breakfast club having sushi and everyone making fun of her.
Like sushi seemed like this very special thing that people who are not liked by the main characters enjoy and so that being me, that appealed to me. So I got my like cash check in my hand. That's useless because it's paper now that isn't worth any currency. And then I have a currency in my wallet because they did have a wallet and I have some sushi.
First of all, congrats on your wallet. Yes. I have a wallet. It's like a mattress that you can take with you and put money under and inside of.
How was that sushi? It was glorious at the time. And I just just like, wow, this is pretty cool because there's lots of little like things that you can do and you can learn how to use chopsticks and sort of lord that over others who hope you don't use chopsticks. Oh, you might as well just eat with your hands cave van.
I mean, you can eat sushi with your hands. It's fine. Yeah. But you know, when you're when you're like 16, 17, there's very little that you can lord over anyone.
So you do what you can. I mean, you don't need to. You don't necessarily need to. You don't need to ask the stench of your own inferiority.
I mean, yeah, you don't really need to have like you don't actually have to have the thing that you lord over the other people. You can just, you know, pretend that it's yeah, lie. I mean, we're not even lying. You don't think you're lying as a teenager.
You think you have a thing, but you don't there's there's no, you don't have a thing to lord over or over anyone. Remember when you were just like really excited about a thing? Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm often excited about lots.
I mean, I'm excited about things like the coming up in like two weeks. So I'm excited. So I'm so excited. I have plenty of stuff that I'm excited about.
I was just feeling bad for you. Okay. I'm not getting plenty excited about things. So what was the first time you had sushi, Robby?
I was you I you I think you you are I'm trying to think of a I can't think of her. I I did not have sushi until I was well into college. I believe the word you were looking for is cosmopolitan. No, that's not quite what I was looking for, but sure I'm very much a country else.
Well, that's what I mean. I grew up where I grew up. There was no sushi. At least not.
I mean, I'm sure if I went to the Asian the Asian buffet, what they might have called it Chinese buffet or the Chinese buffet, there might have been a tiny section. That had, you know, very bad sushi there. I would I would I don't think I don't think I ever went to the Chinese buffet as a teenager as a high schooler. Even if I did, I would not be eating the sushi.
I as a high schooler and certainly younger, my I did not eat sushi at all. I didn't I it was a weird food. Like you said, it's the food the weirdos eat the food that the weird city folk eat. You don't eat that.
It's raw fish. Why would you eat that? It's raw. You don't eat raw food.
You cook it. You cook food. It's a food. It separates us from the animals.
We cook our food. We cook our food animals. And I mean, that's it was my there were no I grew up in rural Florida. There are sushi restaurants there now, but there were not any then there were like when they got a Thai restaurant.
I was amazed. I'm like, wow, yeah, the Thai restaurant and then it closed because it didn't do enough business. But that's it's spaghetti. Exactly.
But it's there's just wasn't sushi around you say grocery store sushi like I did to look at that I go. Oh, that's I look at that. That's not why I eat that. That's I can get it.
If I'm a public's public sub is where I'm going first, but I had sushi in college and then I went, oh, this is good. I was, you know, in my, in my, the thing you do in college is you learn how wrong your parents were about things. Yes. Yes.
That's one of the things I learned is, oh, no, sushi is good. Raw fish is okay. Sometimes, you know, properly prepared and sushi sushi is, is delicious. You should eat more of it.
I need a lot of, I still need a lot of college because it was not a garbage enough food for me in college. I needed more garbage than, you know, real food. The food, the economics of food are very apparent when one is in college. So you can shake.
Oh, I can get a meal for $6. Sounds good. Have you ever had the chili meck? No.
That sounds disgusting, right? Oh, it's got a frisco milk and fries. That's my, that was my go to. And sometimes a shaker if I was feeling fancy.
I do like a frisco milk. Although I'll go with their onion rings in general. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't eat onions in college. It's super strange.
I mean, it's, I'm talking about, that's what I'm saying. So I'm saying I do not trust, like it's taking, it's taking a long time to trust. Hey, actually onions are good. They'll eat onions.
That's one, like that's one of the reasons we're doing this. I think this series of podcasts is to explore our prejudice against food as we've gotten. From when we were young to when we were old and onions is one of the foods I managed to go. No, actually onions are good.
It's okay to eat onions in many, in any of their forms. The multitude of onions. Yes. French fries.
Well, okay. So when I was in high school, my, my sister was younger and we would go, she's still younger than me. That's how time works. But we would go to Publix and there was a Chick-fil-A nearby.
And so what we would do is we would get Publix sushi and then we would go to Chick-fil-A and get waffle fries. And that was sort of our combined, like, this is the most summer vacation kind of thing that we can do. We will get these two foods and we will consume them together in sort of a mega meal. And it was, it was a wonderful pairing.
So I have a fondness for grocery store sushi, even though it's not very good. I had some the other day, actually. I think it was just sort of, I was like, ooh, there's going to be, we need like a small meal. I'm at the store and let's do that.
And the grocery store sushi was not very good. But it was fine. I mean, it was, it's like, you know, it just dries out. And the seaweed salad was on point.
I think Publix sushi is okay. Really? Yeah. And so it's the ATB.
Our local ATB, they make it here. Yeah. They have a big counter where they make it. So, you know, it's relatively fresh.
But it's still, it's still okay. It's okay. I wouldn't, I have to call it good, meaning like in the, in the entire range of what sushi can be, it is better than average, but it is not quite good. That's not, I don't know.
That's, that's still acceptable. I think you know what you're getting when you go to this grocery store and you're getting sushi. You're like, oh, this is not going to be the best sushi. But it'll be, it'll be okay.
And it will still, it will still, yeah, it is still sushi though. It's sushi is that a baseline good kind of, it's like pizza to me, you know, it's, except there is a dangerous, there's like a danger to it. If you get the worst, like you get terrible pizza, you're just like, oh, that was terrible pizza. But you won't get sick.
If you get terrible, terrible sushi, maybe, yes, I've been very lucky. I've never experienced that with sushi. No, I haven't either. It is a fear, but it's just a fear that is hovering and I don't know how real it is because I've gotten food poisoning.
I've never gotten food poisoning from sushi. I've never gotten food poisoning from other foods, but I think it is, it is another thing programmed into me by my parents and my father, especially, he's like, we're all fish, you'll get sick. I'm like, well, no, you probably won't, even if, even if it's like old, it's still probably way more safer than like eating, you know, chicken that's, you know, been cross contaminated or something. So from like public sushi, it traveled to, you know, going to sushi places, which, you know, growing up in, you know, Florida, you know, it's not like, you know, obviously seafood is a thing, but it's, you know, it's just po-dunk, suburban Florida, so I don't know the quality of the sushi, but it was very Eliganza to my, you know, young man pallet, you know, not that my pallet now is, you know, like, oh, well, I'm too good for that, you know, I will, I will drink a foster's oil can and I will eat public sushi in my car.
Well, those are separate things. I will not drink a foster's oil can in my car, but what I'm trying to say is that I'm not, you know, the most discerning, you know, whatever, but more so than I was. It's been a long trek out of the garbage pit. Out of the garbage pit.
I'm not out yet. You're not, I mean, I don't, I sometimes I burrow deeper just to do it. Yeah. I was in Vegas.
That's why when I was in Vegas recently, dive in, like a Scrooge McDuck, just off the board, deep into the garbage pit, get me eight plates at the buffet, get me as much. Just go back for more ice cream, fill me up. Oh, ice cream at a buffet. That's just it's a Vegas buffet.
It was a very good buffet to be fair. I'm sure that's the place that's the place to go for buffet, right? Yes, they have the best, it was a very good buffet. I'm a, I, I like the worst of a phase.
Like I will like an eight dollar buffet. I will eat that. Like I am not precious about, oh, this food is obviously the worst quality. Who cares?
There's so much of it, but biggest buffets, the really, the fancy top notch ones are really, really good. And this was very good, but I'm not, again, I am not precious. I will die directly to the garbage pit at times, knowing how I feel. I just, I think that it's totally different than it was when I was a young, younger person before, like when I was a teenager before high school, before I don't, there just was, like sushi was, was impossible to me because it just, it just wasn't there.
And like there, we are moving, it seems like we are becoming, maybe it's just because I left the, left, Poe Don't Florida and moved to cities where they have things and culture and people that eat different foods than, you know, lasagna and chicken, sometimes chicken lasagna. And sometimes, no, no, no, no, come on, you stuff. They'll be crazy. As I said, those words, a piece of me was like, well, you can't do that.
I liked the good white chicken with white lasagna with chicken. That's very good. I'm a baller, white lasagna the other day with mushrooms. Oh, that's so you're starting to lose me there.
It was really good. I don't like, there's a bit of an, there's a bit of an umami with the mushrooms. Oh, no, we're going to talk about an umami. We are at some point.
Um, but then I went to college and I tried sushi and I went, oh, this is good. And then ever since I love sushi, sushi is great. Uh, it's something I can almost always in the mood to eat. Yes.
Yeah, it is spectacular. I, for the longest time, had a lot of anxiety ordering sushi because one, it's, it's decision paralysis and also since it's all a la carte for the most part, unless you're at like a buffet, uh, it's like, wait, so I'm, I'm, you know, especially it's like a, you know, in college or whatever money is not in it. It's not in a good place with me because it's all going. Uh, and so it's like, okay, I'm going to hemorrhage money with everything I'm eating.
Or what if I don't order enough and I'm hungry? Of course, uh, you, you have to like audibly say, well, we can always order more later as if like it's a magical incantation. Like if you didn't say that, they'd be like, nope, out, leave hungry fat boy. But there was a lot of that, like that anxiety of, uh, what do I order?
Do I order enough? Is this, you know, what if it's the wrong thing? Turns out it was always fun. My, my ordering system for sushi restaurants is one more role than I think I need.
Cause I'm a, I'm a, I'm a fat kid and there is no wrong answers. Everything is good. Just order whatever it looks, whatever sounds good, it just order it. It doesn't need, you don't need to overthink it.
Yeah. There's, it's, it doesn't, even if you order something, you don't know if it's good. It probably will be good. It does, it's, it's like unless it's like, unless it's like there's some, I will say that I, I do not like wasabi at all.
So if there's a lot of wasabi on something, that is a no-go for me. This is, I haven't really encountered many roles that have wasabi on them. No, it's very rare. That's not just being, I don't mind actually like spicy unit rolls or stuff like that.
Uh, that is fine. It is more of the horseradish, usually, and most times you're right, but you don't have, it's, it is on the side with the ginger and the soy sauce. Yes. Well, and that's something that's just so fancy about sushi, especially when you're, you know, new to it, it's like, Oh, well, you have sushi and then, you know, maybe there's a little plastic grass that you were at a grocery store, but there's always the ginger and then there was sobi and you can kind of mix and there's soy sauce.
It's, it's, it's very active food. It's, I guess it's what people like about fondue. Although I don't know, I, I don't like fondue. It's just too much.
I don't know. Not for me, but anyway, there's a lot, there's a lot of business you can do when you're eating sushi. And so that's, that's appealing to me as well. There's a little ritual.
Yeah. A little ritual of like, Hey, here's my, I had my little tiny bowl. I put soy sauce in there and then I had my chopsticks and you break them apart usually and you'll see your little sobi in there and you can put some, you can put you, you have your little thing of ginger and you have, Hey, do you like what's out of you? Put it in your soy sauce and move it around in there and you're like, okay, I, you just, and you pluck one little piece of the roll, you dip it and you, and then it's like, you go, Oh, that's enough and you eat it.
It's a little, it's a little ritual. It's, it's a, it's, it's reassuring that the, that ritual of eating the sushi, you're like, okay, I know that this is, I know how to do this, this simple thing. I know how to, I'm supposed to eat this food. And it's nice.
Um, it's, but I don't, I don't always dip in the soy sauce. Yeah. Sometimes you don't, right? I don't, I don't, I don't, I think I'm not going to, but then I have to.
It depends how much, how much other stuff is there in the sushi roll? If there's like three ingredients, okay. So give me some soy, a little bit of soy sauce in there. Give it a little bit extra, but there's always bad.
And you lose it in the soy sauce. That is awesome. Yeah. When it starts unfurling and then you're like, Oh, no, half the rice is now floating in my little plenty bowl of soy, of soy sauce.
That's, that's always challenging. I still can't order flutamaki because it's just too big. I just, it falls apart. Just shove it in your mouth.
I know. Shove it all in your mouth. Just, I open up his white can and throw it in. I am a firm believer of, I will shove whatever size, a piece of sushi I get.
I will fit it in. It will get in my mouth. It's like, kind of a noise going on. Intensity and ingenuity that put a man on the moon.
Robbie, she'll eat sushi. Exactly. That's the same. Um, it is the same.
It is the same. So another, I think the other, the first, it's the first discovery is, Hey, sushi's good. And then the second discovery is the second tier of discovery is, wait a minute. People have done terrible, terrible things to sushi.
They have made these roles that are fried and covered in barbecue sauce or man, or spicy, or whatever, a condiment, or sometimes multiple condiments, multiple kinds of sauces, you know, we, we are going to be talking about your duty sushi in a bit. And all the sushi in that is like a simple little, like a little thing of rice and a little one piece of fish with a little coating. It's like a little prayer over the glory. Yeah, exactly.
It's, it's all simple. And then you look at the sushi, I order a lot of the time when I go to sushi restaurants, it's like, Oh, this is, uh, has, it's, it's deep fry and then covered in some sort of mayonnaise or sweet sauce or whatever. And there's a part of me that goes, is this sushi anymore? Yeah.
I, I had a run in with a, and all you can eat sushi place. And the way it works is you, you know, you have to like, in order to order more sushi, you have to like finish what you have. Right. And so, you know, after a couple of, which is fine.
That's, that's probably there needs to be regulations in place. And so we were, you know, like as you're like going through the menu, you're like, Oh, well, let's try that strawberry. Uh, and, you know, fish, that sounds, it was not good. It was horrendous.
It was exactly as bad as you imagine it to be. I don't really imagine it to be bad. So maybe it was good. It, uh, I like, I'm, I'm saying like, I like, I'm not, I'm not, I enjoy this weird, the weird Western eyes bastardization of sushi.
Oh yeah. I have no problem with, with that. I don't know if I want six pieces of barbecue sauce roll, but I could imagine a world in which a brisket roll is a good thing. I got that in Dallas.
And let me tell you, you said, yeah, it was amazing. Is there any way you could make like short grain sushi rice, like yellow rice and make like a Cuban roll where you have like yellow rice and maybe some black beans and like some mohawk pork? I mean, you, you just, I mean, be the change you want in the world. Wow, Gandhi, you can do it.
Yeah. Just like Gandhi, just like Gandhi. Yes, but I mean, I, I, I think about what sushi, what does that mean? What sushi means and I go, oh, when I go to sushi restaurant, I kind of, well, sometimes I like simple rolls.
I like the, like, hey, it's all this tuna is literally rice and tuna. There's nothing else in some soy sauce, like in the ginger sushi is just the simplest little thing. And you're like, oh, this is, this is delicious because it's a simple. And then I also like, hey, this is just, it's a deep fried roll.
And it's, it's literally my dessert roll, the name is called dessert roll. And you're like, okay, I'll bring it, just shovel it in. I'll eat two of them. I love them.
I love it so much. I just need more of it and I like that too. Uh, I just think sometimes on my mind, I go, am I, like, like, is this fair? Is it fair to call this sushi?
Like how, how wide a swath are we capturing when we call something sushi? It is a roll is rice. It is a, there is a seaweed wrap in there. There is, you know, fish in there or, or imitation crab, probably.
And it's the deep fried and covered in a sweet sauce. Is that sushi? Absolutely. Okay.
I mean, is a hot dog a sandwich? No. Oh, yeah. I, I intellectually, I want to say it is, but like it's, it just seems gross to say that.
It's a hot dog. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter what the thing is, it's sushi as you want it to be. It's fine.
I mean, when I, when I think of sushi, I, you know, like there's this sort of idealized version or there are tears to it, like, you know, there's like trashy sushi, like all you can eat or like a grocery store or like there's this sort of garden variety. You know, you go to a place and they make the sushi and they bring it to you. And it's, it's good. And then there's like that idealized version of sushi where it's like, I want to go to a place and I want to just order the, whatever the chef wants to bring me.
That's, oh, oh, makase. Oh, makase. That's, yeah, that's the, that's the Japanese raised meaning roughly. I'll leave it up to you or to entrust.
I like that. So that's, that is, that is one of my bullet points is the, is my, I recently, for the very first time, no, I'd never done this. I've gone to get sushi many, many, many times, but I recently forward my, me and my wife's anniversary. We went to a very, very nice sushi place in Austin called a kauchi.
Um, and we ordered the omakasei, we ordered the chef, the chef's daily special, you know, whatever they, they are menu, the chef's menu of the day of just, you know, what is fresh, what is good, et cetera, et cetera. I would recommend doing that. I, the jealousy within me. Cause like, I, when I, when I heard of this as a concept, I think I was reading like Anthony Bourdain or something, it might have been kitchen confidential.
And he's like, you know, after, after cooking all day, all these chefs just want to get sushi in, they just order whatever and you get what's good and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, that sounds really cool. I'm into that. So unfortunately, I proceeded for about a year and a half every time I got sushi to embarrass myself and be like, oh, I'll just, I'll just what, whatever the chef thinks is good.
And like the person is just like, here's the menu. Here's your little golf pencil, stop bothering me. And they just give me this withering look of like, this is not that place. And I'm like, well, is this a place?
And so I have yet to have the alma case, because I guess I just go to jumpy places. I mean, it, I think if you are going to be asking, Hey, I want what the chef thinks is good, then you are expected to like officially go, no, I want to pay for it. You know, they don't, they're not going to just give it away for free because it is, you know, there is, as you see in the documentary, there's a lot of training required to become a sushi chef. And, you know, it is not as simple as asking, Hey, what's good?
What does the chef recommend? Well, the chef recommends everything. But if you want something special from the chef, you're going to have to pay extra for it. I wasn't asking for anything special.
I was just like, Hey, you make the decision for me. That's, yeah, you shouldn't ask people to do that for you. So I have realized that you have to make your own decisions in life. I hate it and sushi, too.
I would recommend doing, I, I adopt, it's a little, it's a little scary, though. The idea like it's, it's, it's exciting, but it's also for a long time. I didn't do it because one, it is expensive. Don't do not, especially if you go to a top-notch place, the Omakase is very expensive.
And obviously not everyone just can just do it. We probably, you know, this will be a once a year thing, probably, for me and my wife, from now on, because I intend to do this again. It was, it was a very lovely experience because you don't, like it is, they just bring you things. They say, I went, I, you're like, I want the Omakase, I went the big version of it because they had a little tiny version of it, too.
I went the big version and they go, OK, cool. What do you want to drink? And then you data start bringing in plates and it's an ideal version of life, I think. It's, it's like that.
It's incredibly, it feels incredibly intelligent. It feels like I should not be doing this the entire time. I'm like, this is feels wrong. I'm evil, like I become the Bond villain, but it also is incredibly good.
And the food was amazing. The sushi was amazing. It was really, really, really good. And I would say that yes, if you have the means to do it, find the best sushi restaurant in your area and then go ask for it.
And it is, it's a really neat experience that doesn't really exist in other food. Like there's not like, if you go to a steakhouse, they'll go, yeah, the chefs, chefs, special steak and they, but it's just a steak. You know, you're getting a steak and it sure, it's a great steak. It's probably amazing.
It costs $150 and it's been cured for, you know, weeks or something and it cuts like butter and probably tastes like amazing, but it's just this is a singular steak, but when you ask for a chef's preparation of the sushi, you're getting, you know, 10 different things and they're all different from each other. I mean, all that different flavor profiles and it feel, it's, it feels special. It's really, it's, it's something incredibly unique that I have not, I've never, like, like even if I'm trying to think of anything that's comparable in any kind of restaurant setting. One time Eric's a good night got, he was like, let's go to his Korean restaurant and we kind of did some version of that where it was just like, just bring us whatever and they did.
And it was, it was a spectacular experience. Obviously it was not the number of items that one would get with like a sort of sushi where you're by the roll or whatever piece, but it was, it was very, it was very nice to just go to a place and then it's like, okay, this is going to be surprising, you know, and the people are excited about it and you're excited and you're like, what's this? And they kind of explain it, it's very nice. It's, it's as close to like going to someone's home and having them like cook for you as you can get.
But then, you know, I can, it's inconceivable to me what that must be like with sushi because sushi is so heavily assembled and manufactured. And so it's like, um, very, I don't know, sushi is just exciting. Like the idea of, it's almost like showing off. It's like, yeah, I'm not going to cook much of this aside from the rice or whatever, but like I'm going to assemble it so that the proportions are like perfect.
And so it will, you know, hold its structure and all of that. Yes. For the, for this podcast, I made sushi for the very first time, myself, in my home. Nice.
I, I, I don't know how, okay, you, you have, I've seen you make sushi. Yeah. You have actually, I've made it for you. Yes.
I, I think I only ate a little bit because I had already eaten. I think before I got to your house, but I saw you make sushi. How do you make sushi? Well, I, um, it's been, it's been a little while because like I, I had gotten into a pattern where I was doing a good job with it.
And then I had a couple runs, a couple of rolls where it's just like, these are not good and, and I just haven't done it. And I, I've been meaning to like get back into it. I didn't make it right before, you know, uh, this today, but, you know, it's kind of like been percolating in my mind to make sushi. So obviously the rice, you know, you get like the, uh, the vinegar, like the, you know, sushi vinegar, whatever else and, um, you have your little wrapping roll thing.
And I've been experimenting with the, uh, with a plastic wrap, but that hasn't really been working out. I don't know. I, I think I just need to relearn and usually I'll make like, um, like a cream cheese roll or, uh, maybe like with smoked salmon or something like that. I, I have yet to make like get like the sashimi gray tuna or anything like that.
Like I haven't, I haven't done that yet. And that's really something I would like to do. But, you know, just not over stuffing it is the hardest lesson to learn. Yeah, I, I, I, I don't know, I, I'm going to say it's not cheating, but it is a, it is an easy way, because I bought a kit.
I bought a easy sushi making kit. It's called sushi quick, sushi quick. That sounds like a place. Yes.
That sounds like a place that you could go to. Oh, yeah. I'll go to sushi quick. It's sushi quick, but the quick does not have seen it.
So it's quick, quick, quick, slow Q U I K, uh, uh, it is a little kit that comes with a little guide that lets you not put too much rice in and a little, uh, little, uh, little rolly plastic thing that basically can, makes it easier to compress the sushi inside the wrapper and a guy to cut, uh, the pieces into even segments so that you don't have lumpy malformed pieces. Okay, did this work? Yeah. It worked very well.
It worked actually. I was, I was a little bit one. There is, you have to learn how to use it correctly, which is one of the first part. And then the second part is me going, is this actually?
Easier than actual rolling just with, you know, your hands and whatever. Actually, yes, it is. Yes. I think it is easier.
I, I will continue. I'm, this is, I am buying into this primitive system. This, this, it's like $16. It's not like it costs $50 or something.
It's just a bunch of plastic bits, but it's just, it's a very simple, like, because there's a little guy you put over the, your, your seaweed and it lets you know not to put too much rice in. You fill up this, it's like a little tiny, like, you know, a couple of millimeters, tall thing, but it just makes you sure you, hey, put your rice up to here and then stop and then layer, layer your ingredients, whatever they are and then roll. You see, I'm, I'm looking at that thing now and this is the, the first time, because I've had sushi kits and they, they incorporate the kind of thing that you put on top to guide and cut and all that stuff. Um, but this is, that is an interesting, uh, like, let's not put too much rice in here kind of thing.
And then the, the sort of rolling mechanism, this is, I'm going to say, this is probably the, the best sushi making kid I've seen. I wanted to make sure my first time was, I, I wanted to actually make sushi and not have the, be the experience be, oh, I tried and failed. So this is real ugly and it's real ugly. Um, but people say things like, it'll taste good.
That's, I've gotten that a couple of times. So I, I did, I use the kit, which I am, anyone listening, if you want to make sushi and it's always fun intimidating by that kit, it works. Um, because it is intimidating making your own sushi because it is a thing that you feel, it feels like a lot of food, I know that I could make it at home. If I really wanted to, and I'm going to a restaurant for convenience sake, because they'll make it for me.
I don't have to do anything. I'm lazy. I don't have to buy the ingredients. There's only a few foods where I go, no, I can't make this at home.
Like barbecue, like I am not going to smoke something for 36 hours or something. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to do that. I, I've thought about it. I, I used to live across the street from my father-in-law and, uh, he had, you know, he has this Traeger smoker and it's just spectacular.
And I think maybe I should go to smoker. And I'm like, I don't need a $500 smoker to, to, to just experiment. I was like, maybe I'll go like a tree boy. And it's like, you know, what am I going to cook something for 18 hours?
Like I, I just, I think about it. And I'm like, this is, what am I doing? What am I doing? Yes.
It, it, like barbecue and sushi. That's what I, like, I go, Oh, I can go to the restaurant. It'll be much better than anything I try and make. And it will take so long for me to try and make it that it's, it's going to be a sizable investment.
Like you have to make a, you have to have a smoker to make real barbecue and you have to have, you have to have rice and seaweed and every single, like you want to make more than one roll. You've got to have a bunch of different little ingredients to make the sushi. So the thing with sushi is once you start to get over the initial, like, okay, I have, you know, I have a bunch of rice. I have like the vinegar and the soy sauce and whatever.
I mean, presumably you have soy sauce, uh, but you know what I mean? Like, once you've started done it and you haven't kind of like the start, you can kind of, you know, if you keep Nori in the house or just get some Nori, like the seaweed, you can kind of just be like, yeah, I got some cucumbers and I have some carrots and I have some green cheese or whatever. Like, let's make sushi. Like you can kind of just make it, you know, especially, you know, you, you keep certain things on hand, like the ginger was, wasabi or whatever.
Um, and so that's kind of fun. Like to be able to just realize, Oh yeah, I can just make some. Obviously it's not going to hold a candle to like some proper, you know, sushi, the master's hands are busy sushi. Uh, but you know, it's fine.
You know, it's, it's a tasty snack. Yes. And I mean, I, we, I made three different roles. I should say we, my wife and I both, we did both contributed.
Um, we made, we did, you filled up your role. The smoked salmon and green cheese and et cetera. Uh, we did a yam roll with a sweet potato. That's interesting to me.
What did you do with that? I, I haven't encountered a yam roll. I mean, it's just, I just baked a sweet potato, I chopped a sweet potato and a strips roasted it and put it inside and then they're, they're, I, like, we put a, I think put avocado in there with it, uh, maybe some cucumber too. And then just put a little bit of sauce on top, similar, made a spicy mayo that I used and put that on top of it and very good, actually, really, really, really good.
Uh, and finally the third was we actually did. We bought, we went to the, the, um, the fancy grocery store and bought some sushi gray tuna frozen in a flash, frozen in a big block. Oh, I guess that would have to be, right? Yes, it has to be.
For, to be considered, uh, sushi grade, you have to flash reset, basically right off the boat and when I first, and when I first heard that, I was just like, Oh, that's, that's what does it. That's what makes it safe. It's amazing. So it is just a big block of, I think one pound block of tuna and, uh, much was that wasn't that expensive.
Yeah, I don't remember. I think it was like 20 bucks, something like that or something like that. Like, what did you, what did you get? Like, out of, because I've never done this.
Like, uh, I imagine you get quite a few rolls out of that. Uh, we use, yeah, we use, I mean, we didn't even use all of it in the sushi. Uh, we just ate the rest of it. Just roll, you know, like animals out of the refrigerator, just eating pieces of chopped up sushi, uh, tuna, uh, the, but we, I think we made three rolls out of three, like each, like a quarter of a pound is a roll, basically, because we, you know, we chopped it up into pieces and then mixed it with a, uh, with, uh, I make it like a spicy tuna, like sauce and mix that with green onions as well.
And then put that in the roll and then put a spicy mayo on top of it. And that was amazing. I don't, I'm not going to say my sushi, it's a good, some sushi chefs roll or whatever, but it wasn't very good. Just, I think, I think frankly you put that, you know, high grade tuna in something, fatty tuna, it's going to taste good.
It doesn't matter what you do, like it's hard to screw up because it's just such a good food. It tastes so good and brings so much like such an interesting flavor profile to whatever you're making. It doesn't matter what you do to it. Uh, it was very good roll.
Um, and I think next time I would just make two rolls. I think that's what we would do. We would just focus on ingredients for two rolls and just make, you know, as many as we could. I think we made five rolls solo with the amount of rice.
I think I made it, did a two cups of rice, made five rolls for two people. And there was, you know, plenty left over. That's just spectacular. Now I just want to be making sushi now.
I know that's, I think that's the thing. Like it was a lot of work. It took like hours to do all this, you know, the construction and stuff and cooking all the ingredients because we did three, that's the thing. Making for rolls, you have to have all these extra, the cooking of the sweet potatoes, I think was a significant part of it.
But even though the sweet potato rolls were really good though. Um, yeah, no, I, I'm intrigued by the sweet potato roll business. I would, I would, I, you know, adding the step of having to roast a sweet potato stuff that like adds a lot of extra steps. If you weren't doing that, it makes it a lot easier.
But again, then you don't have a sweet potato roll, but it, it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. The experience in total, um, the, the kit helped. I, but I want to do it again. I, like, it's, it's a fun thing.
I, then I kind of want to make it like a monthly like, okay, let's make sushi. And yeah, let's just, what do we want to make? You know, and it was delicious. The rice, I follow the out brown sushi rice recipe.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It worked, worked really well. The rice was very good.
I don't, I don't know if it's the special zero dreams of sushi rice quality. Good. But it was very good. It was stuck together.
It wasn't poison. Yeah, it's exactly. It tastes like sushi rice. I don't know.
It wasn't like the best rice I've ever had, but it was good rice and it worked well in the sushi. Um, I'm glad I did it. I would suggest everyone to try and make it. If you have a, if you want to have a fun, like nighting cooking, either by yourself or with your partner, uh, it is, it's a, it's a, it's a neat experience.
It feels, it's very gratifying. Cooking for yourself feels good because you're, you're, you're learning a skill and you're making something and you're eating it and, you know, it, there's, those combinations of things is very gratifying. And in this case, it is, there's like an extra element there because there's like a weird, a weird, it's not like any other food, you know, that you feel kind of like a boss. You're like, I made sushi.
It did it. There's like a weird, it's like building a Lego set. That's what it feels like. It's like you're, it has the normal feelings of cooking.
But then also like the, when you build a Lego set and look at it or put together a puzzle, you know, and you're like, I did that. I made it. Look at that. Well, and also since there's a lot of repetition involved in it, because hopefully you're not just going to make one role.
No, you're, you're kind of seeing yourself get better at it, which is helpful, which is like, why, it's like, I haven't done it in a while. And I know that first role is going to be like, for the dog, you know, it's just gonna, I'm just gonna look at it and be like, oh, this is bad. Nobody will see this, you know, but that's satisfying too. Cause then you can like eat it and you're like, yeah, all right.
And while all the ding dongs who aren't cooking are waiting, you are, you are dreaming, you are not dreaming of sushi, you are consuming sushi. Yes. I enjoyed, I enjoyed making the making of sushi a lot. I'm glad I did it.
I will do it again. I'm proud of you. Thanks. I watched my mic.
Go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I was going to talk about my first experience making sushi. OK, I believe I had a kit.
I was, I was trying to impress somebody. I think it was like 17, 18, maybe, and like I ordered, I ordered a CD of Japanese music from my local record store. So I could play it and I got some plum wine. And it was like the whole thing, you know, it was probably awful sushi.
I think it was like a cream cheese type role, cream cheese in a cucumber. It was, but I felt real, real elegant, just like, you know, I'll make it sushi. It was, it was about as elegant as I felt when I went through my cooking with wine phase in high school, where everything was just, let's add some wine to it. And I tortured my family with my terrible food.
Needless to say, it didn't work out with the sushi or with the person I was trying to impress, but that's fine. I've moved on. And now I make a better sushi, or at least hopefully, I don't know, you had my sushi was fine, right? Yeah, it's good.
Thank you. It's a breaking endorsement. Yeah, it tastes good. It tastes good.
I don't know. That's, that's, that's all I want. It's the only one I'm looking for. I'm fine with that.
Yeah. Thank you. Um, I'll make some more. Yeah, just with that math, though.
No, not because I'm too good, but because I got rid of my kit, because I didn't use it. It was hard for me to use. I did not have a great kit. So I kind of use the math and kind of compress it and it took me a long time to realize that you don't just roll it in the math.
You kind of switch it. Yeah, you got to, you got to meldy agree. Yeah, that was shove them together as hard as you can. Yes, obviously, shove it together, smoosh it, smoosh the fish.
Well, where does it make all the things? It's like compressing a sandwich. It really does make it better and the construction of a thing, you know, sandwiches are very similar to sushi in that it's this food that is meant to be consumed in, you know, as it is, it's not like meant to be sort of cut up and stuff obviously bite into a sandwich, but like if it falls, you know, a pasta dish, if it falls apart, that's fine because that's, you know, kind of how that works. But like a sandwich or a piece of sushi, it needs to hold it's a structural integrity.
And so like how you put the ingredients together is like a whole other level, you know, like with sandwiches, like what order you put things in or like I had a cream cheese and jelly sandwich yesterday, which surprisingly delicious, but my sister made it because we were going to the beach and she is spectacular and brought lunch. It was, it was excellent. And so she's like, oh, yeah, let me, I put some, some butter on the bread before putting the jelly so it wouldn't like seep through. So there was a fat layer and I was like, what?
And it was the most absolutely constructed sandwich that was made hours earlier and, you know, satin and didn't get soggy. And I love well constructed things. That makes me happy. So sushi, obviously, when it's done, well, it's super exciting.
And it's almost mystifying to me to try and get that and I haven't quite accomplished it, but I'm going to keep trying. Speaking of speaking of taking a long time to perfect something after doing it over and over and over again, you said, yes, yes, I finally watched Giro dreams of sushi. What do you think? I have no, I, this has been, this movie has existed for a long documentary has existed for a while and I've never watched it.
Not because the topic doesn't interest me. It's just I go, it's never the number one thing on Netflix. It's always like, yeah, a little ways down the list and it just always gets continually gets pushed down and pushed down and now I'm like, oh, why is all that shit for the sushi episode of podcast? I don't, I had no idea what the consensus is on this.
This documentary made me tremendously sad. Really? Yes. Why?
This man is little so basement. This man is a crazy person, yourself. This he, I'm not going to argue that he's not the best sushi chef on the planet or the sushi he makes it tastes transcendent or, you know, whatever. I believe all those people are very good.
I believe that when they give it three Michelin stars, I believe what the all the people who are like, talk about how amazing it is. And it looks amazing. I will say every piece of sushi that we see in the camera that the camera lovingly, like, it's like pornography, it just stares, it just focuses in slow motion camera of like soy sauce dripping off a little bit. Or it looks great.
I'm sure it tastes amazing. That man and his sons are the saddest thing I've seen in a long time. It's not worth it. You said it's not worth it.
Great. Excellent. No, it's not worth it. He seems like satisfied.
That's fine. I'm, I don't, are you telling me when you look into his son's eyes, you don't see some like hidden deep sadness there? Yeah, I guess it's kind of a bummer to just to do the one thing. But like, I mean, if you think about it, what does any of us do?
Like, what is, what is this life? I don't do a single thing every day until I die yourself. I do many things. I, I write, I also podcast, I also play D&D.
I have cats that I take care of and love. I have a wife that I take care of and love and we, she takes care of, takes care of me and loves me and we go out and do things. I don't dedicate my life to making one single thing and only doing that every single day and never seeing my family and encouraging my sons to not go to college instead to work in a restaurant and then never die so that they are, their entire lives are forced to be lesser than me. Yeah, it's, it's real.
It's real selfish of him not dying. It's, I never knew dying. It's something selfish like, Hey, stop, go retire, go. Oh, I would go crazy, you know, find a hobby, dude.
Go do something else. Let your son take over the restaurant. You're 85 years old. He's 93 today.
You said he's still alive. I'm still in that basement. Probably is. I have no idea.
But that poor son, I feel less bad about this younger son because he actually gets to go open his own restaurant. Sure, he may never, it may never be considered as good as his father, but at least he has his own place to run that the poor, the, the oldest son, like they talk about how, yeah, the Michelin, the Michelin star people came there the first time. He beat all the sushi and he gets no credit for it. Yeah, it is kind of a bummer.
Like, like work, work, life, balance is real people. You need to, you need to take care of yourself, you know, have some hobbies, do some stuff. Yeah, you're, you're kind of convincing me that maybe this is, it is kind of a bummer. It's like, I don't, and I'm not sure if the doc, I don't know, I guess that's probably good, I think, in the case of documentary, because I don't know, I can't read if the documentary is trying to influence one way or the other about how we're supposed to feel about him and his single mindedness towards the excellence, whatever you want to call it, towards sushi.
And I, like, I don't know, certain documentaries don't try and hide their bias and are like, no, we want you to feel this way about this. And then other documentaries are a little bit more ambivalent. They're just showing us things and we make our own minds up. And I don't know if I'm supposed to be impressed by the single mindedness and like it is, it is interesting that he is so, so like, and you're right.
I don't, he seems to love his job. He loves to seem just making sushi all the time and doing it every single day. But to me, it seems tremendously sad and I don't, it's not even him really. It's his family, it's his wife and his children that they make the joke that when they saw him sleeping at home, they said, who is this stranger?
Yeah, that's, that's a bit, that's a bit hard to take. My own father is a workaholic and worked a lot. And I didn't see him all the time when I was a kid. Yeah, but he's, I still saw him some and we still went on vacations and we still took things from time to time.
He was difficult to get away from his work, but we did those things and I look at those sons and the only way they could get close to him was by being brow beaten by him to make sushi with him. He's like, I, I admit that I was harder on my own sons when they were training than I am on normal people. I'm like, Oh, great. Cool.
You sound like a great dude. I eat your sushi, but I don't want to know you. You don't, you seem like a psychopath. It's, it's what it takes to be the best.
I guess I don't, nothing's worth it. You stuff. Is it that much better than a dude who went home every night and like, some of those kids? Not, not to me.
I mean, that's my pilot again. Like, I'll know somebody, if I, if I get the, the Omakase, I'll know that this is real good sushi, but I don't know if I would be able to tell, like, like Jiro sushi from like real good sushi. Like, I'm going to be like, yeah, this is really tasty. And that's the thing, like, like a meal is this fleeting thing that, you know, you go to a place or whatever and maybe it's, you know, just really good.