The sushi chef doing the unthinkable – intentionally serving fish gone bad
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Remarkable Living
The sushi chef doing the unthinkable – intentionally serving fish gone bad
Most restauranteurs won't remember twice virtually throwing out food they recollect has gone bad. But Tokyo chef Koji Kimura has turned obstacles into opportunities.
For the intrepid foodie, anile sushi offers an umami like no other. (Photo: Threesixzero Productions)
xi Apr 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 03:58PM)
When Chef Koji Kimura started Sushi Kimura restaurant in 2005, he was confident that he would have enough patrons to appreciate his sushi-making skills; he didn't reckon he needed media coverage or any course of advert. Three years into the business, the number of customers dwindled. That was when he realised that he had "no weapon in his sushi," he said.
Since there were no customers, he had to throw out the fish, simply he hesitated as the fish was large and costly. He thought "there should exist some parts that I could eat." He was surprised to find that while the fish didn't smell good, it had an intense season, something he had never tasted earlier.
He took a gamble, thinking that this could be his "weapon". He said: "I decided to try and remove the olfactory property and retain the sweetness of the fish to brand sushi". For 5 years, he went through many rounds of trial and fault – removing the unpleasant unwanted elements so that he would go an "umami kick, that is a few times greater than the original corporeality".
Every time he bought fish, he would go through "a contrary thought process" to try to notice a way to save the fish. Kimura expressed: "It's not the blazon of fish that determines how long information technology should be aged. It depends on private fish because each ane has eaten unlike things and lived in different areas".
He went on to explicate that because fish live for different number of years, he has to discern the difference, and command the amount of salt, h2o and temperature accordingly, in deciding how each fish should exist aged. Fish ageing is a plush and fourth dimension-consuming procedure, taking between xl and 50 days under varying conditions to complete.
Non only that, the work is as well tiring and hard, says Kimura, who has not taken a single day off for the final 14 years. Undaunted, he is determined to enjoy the process. He laughs that while the ladies accept fun going to Gucci and shopping for handbags, he goes to "my 'Gucci' fish store and say, 'fish, fish, fish – buy!'. He added: "I live a life that allows me to take fun shopping for fish."
Ownership fish gives him happiness, he says, but it besides "turns into the happiness of preparing fish. Your happiness from eating my food becomes my happiness over again."
Kimura believes he has not mastered the art of ageing sushi. He explained: "The way I age the fish is only the first prototype. I call back there's a lot I can improve on." He is quick to acknowledge that at 48, it would exist also tiring for him to go dorsum to the beginning and beginning from scratch. For now, he will stick to what he knows, and make minor improvements if he finds easier means of doing it.
But he says his concept has not changed and he will go along to "serve something that doesn't exist in any other office of the globe, only unique to Kimura", and that includes serving aged sushi, which has a more full-bodied umami deliciousness than sushi made with fresh fish.
He added: "This doesn't exist in whatever other sushi restaurant in the globe."
Adapted from the series Remarkable Living. Sentinel total episodes on CNA, every Dominicus at 7pm.
READ> The chef making his own caviar from sturgeon in Japan for Singapore diners
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/remarkableliving/sushi-chef-aged-sushi-koji-kimura-tokyo-japan-239361
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