Free The Story of Sushi by Trevor Corson Page A

fish spoils easily and the Japanese considered it smelly. The fatty belly meat of the tuna was especially despised.
    But with the advent of refrigeration, the fish could be kept fresh, and in the years after World War II the Japanese learned from Americans to love red meat, including tuna.
    Takumi, the Japanese student, stood across the table and watched. On his cutting board sat a similar but smaller slab of tuna.
    Toshi carved through the block of flesh like a sculptor, scrutinizing the muscle, turning and trimming. He tossed scraps into a bowl.
    “We’ll use these for spicy tuna,” he said. He was speaking Japanese, but the words “spicy tuna” were in English. There isn’t even a name for it in Japanese. In the early days of American sushi, Japanese chefs in L.A. had realized they could take the worst parts of the fish—the fibrous scraps, the flesh left on the skin, and meat past its prime—and chop them up with chili sauce. The taste of the fish was lost, but Americans loved it.
    “The Mexican influence here is strong,” Toshi told Takumi. “Americans like spicy food more than Japanese people do.”
    Takumi nodded. In a few minutes, he would scrape shreds of meat off the skin with a spoon, chop them up with other scraps, and squirt the mixture full of hot sauce. But now he tried his hand at trimming his slab of tuna. When he started to cut, Toshi stopped him.
    “No, not like that. You’re cutting in the same direction as the fiber.” With his finger Toshi traced the parallel lines of connective tissue that ran through the tuna’s flesh like the grain in a piece of wood. “See? You’ve got to cut against the fiber.” Toshi flipped the slab of meat over so Takumi could slice into it from the other side. “Cut them thinner than you would for the restaurant,” he added. “For a catering job like this, we go for volume.”
    Other restaurant staff trickled in to help prepare for the party. Toshi’s office assistant dumped a 2-pound bag of bright green powder labeled “wasabi” into a mixing bowl. Like most wasabi served in restaurants, there wasn’t a shred of wasabi in it. Real wasabi is a rare plant that is notoriously difficult to grow and tastes quite different. This was a mix of horseradish and mustard powder. She added water and stirred. The powder jelled into a green blob, which emitted fumes. Toshi wheezed.
    “Get the hell out of the kitchen with that thing!” he bellowed. “It’s going to drive us all crazy.”
    The woman bowed, hugged the bowl to her chest, and left, her eyes watering.
    Soon Kate and the other students trickled in and loaded the catering equipment into a rented truck. Jay shouted out instructions.
    “Bring a minimal amount of stuff with you!” Jay said. “Do not bring big bags! Otherwise, you’re not going to get through security!”
    But, of course, they took their knives.
    The students would ride in the restaurant’s old van. Kate hopped into the front passenger seat and pulled the door shut with a bang. They cruised down the freeway. In the distance the glass towers of downtown L.A. rose through the haze. Soon they were driving straight toward the gigantic white “HOLLYWOOD” letters on the hill. They pulled alongside a vast, high-walled compound. Security cameras monitored the van’s arrival.
    At the security checkpoint there were men with guns—big guns. Some rested Winchester rifles on their shoulders. Others carried six-shooters on their hips. Most of them wore ten-gallon hats and chaps. They were actors. The real guards wore windbreakers and carried walkie-talkies. The actors passed their guns to the guards and walked through the metal detector. When the guards saw Kate’s chef’s jacket, they found her name on a list and waved her through, along with her case of knives.
    Inside the compound Kate followed her classmates past a row of hangars and emerged onto the edge of an American frontier town of a hundred years ago, bustling with inhabitants of the