Since the Edo period in the 1800s, Japanese have generally regarded sushi as a simple meal of raw fish atop rice, consumed quickly at an informal counter. According to traditionalists, the fare should consist only of vinegared rice topped with fresh raw fish, shellfish, fish eggs or cooked eggs, served with hot green tea and pickled ginger. Japan’s revolving sushi bars, popularized during the ’70s, are about as avant-garde as the traditionalists get. But now comes a place like Rainbow Roll Sushi, which opened last September with what its developers call a “new 21st-century style of sushi dining.” And that style is about as far from Tokyo as you can get.
Yoko Shibata, the founder of Rainbow Roll Sushi, first discovered American-style sushi–complete with mayonnaise and zucchini–a decade ago as a college student in Chicago, where she worked as a waitress in a suburban Japanese restaurant. “The way the customers enjoyed sushi there was very different from the way the Japanese people eat sushi,” Shibata recalls. “It was like dining on health food leisurely in a posh restaurant.”
The memory stuck with her even after she returned to Tokyo. There she joined WDI Corp., which franchises such American institutions as Tony Roma’s and Hard Rock Cafe. Then last March, Shibata presented her company with a plan for a totally new sushi restaurant, and her idea was accepted. Her restaurant offers a variety of appetizers, such as oyster shooters and white shrimp cocktails, as well as 18 original rolls, which cost between $6 and $10 a plate. Philadelphia Roll comes with smoked salmon, cucumber, cream cheese and scallion wrapped inside rice rolls. The Dynamite Roll consists of scallops, flying-fish roe, red chili and mayonnaise. Nickson Roll was named for a frequent customer in Chicago who favored its combination of eel, cucumber, cream cheese and scallion.
The Rainbow Roll Sushi restaurant is not fighting the sushi revolution alone. Western-style sushi began to take off around 1998 when Masuko Takeuchi, a general manager of the Four Seeds restaurant group, decided that she wanted to create a comfortable and trendy sushi bar. So she and her colleagues toured Europe for ideas. “We saw some hip and stylish sushi bars in London,” Takeuchi recalls. “They were not bound by the Japanese tradition and, therefore, were able to create a new sushi culture. We were also aware that Japan’s young generation don’t mind mixing East and West as far as food goes.” In April 1999 they opened Kakiya-sushi, a spacious and fashionable place with Italian-made chairs, which serves 700 customers on weekends. Besides traditional sushi, the restaurant’s revolving conveyors offer Kakiya rolls, with avocado, salmon, lettuce and asparagus wrapped in seaweed and rice, and vegetarian rolls of fried tofu, cucumber and avocado.
Not surprisingly, the idea of Americanized sushi’s making its way back to Japan has drawn a mixed reaction in Tokyo. Plenty of Japanese welcome the new trend. Sitting inside Rainbow Roll Sushi on a recent evening, Kazuko Fukamachi, a 33-year-old office lady, downed sushi rolls with a glass of Guinness. “I consider these dishes a totally different cuisine from sushi,” Fukamachi said. “I have eaten these rolls in L.A. and Hawaii, and I love it.” But other Japanese are horrified. To them, using ingredients like cream cheese and smoked salmon is as offensive as a Westerner dressed in a samurai costume.
No one is more outraged by the growing popularity of these “outside rolls” than the members of Japan’s National Sushi Society. “What’s been served as outside rolls are not genuine sushi,” fumes Takeo Takahashi, executive director of the society, which consists of 40,000 traditional sushi shops. “They are fake.” In order to protect traditional sushi, the society holds sushi-making contests and demonstrations. Good old-fashioned Edo-style sushi is not likely to disappear any time soon. “I have eaten reimported sushi several times,” says Yukie Ushijima, a 35-year-old Tokyo housewife. “I still prefer a traditional sushi with good rice and fresh tuna on top.” Hold the mayo.
