I also assume there are some major difference when eating sushi in a fine dining situation and eating sushi at your own home in a casual situation.
A lot of the proper ways to eat things are not the ways the people who invented and eat the thing usually do it, unsurprisingly - but then there is some stuff, usually seemingly random stuff, even those home chefs and tired parents seem to take seriously.
It is worth noting that fine dining sushi is itself non-traditional. Sushi originated as essentially a quick finger-food for the working class, served at port cities in Japan. Diners ate, wiped their fingers on the curtains (noren), and went back to work. The traditional beverage to drink with sushi, similarly, is the working-class rice beer.
Sushi is an incredible cuisine and the best I've ever had was in a fine-dining restaurant, but "traditional" sushi is blue collar.
Yup I went to Japan 13 years ago after watching a video like this… and then just watched the Japanese people in this hole in the wall all mix the wasabi and soy sauce.
There might be a ‘proper’ way to eat these things and then a way for every day people actually eat it.
Born in Japan with a native parent and family. We all mix wasabi and shoyu when eating sushi at home/casual dining. The most common faux paus I notice is resting chopsticks upright in food, passing food from chopstick to chopstick, or placing a slice of ginger on sushi and eating it together. I never really say anything in America, but these are good to know if you are dining with Japanese guests or traveling to Japan.
I'm gonna go ahead and say any chef having personal etiquette standards for eating their food is pretentious. It's something people admonish European fine dining for doing a lot, but when it's Japanese it's suddenly cultured and professional. It's one thing to expect guests not be be rude, but to demand something further than the standard polite etiquette from people is high and mighty.
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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '26
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