Sushi's Extraordinary Evolution: From Pickle to Primetime
3/24/202645 min
Sushi is everywhere these days—in grocery stores and gas stations, at buffets and birthday parties, in Europe and Latin America and all over the United States. This popularity is especially astonishing when you remember that, just a few decades ago, the idea of eating nuggets of raw fish and rice seemed bizarre, intimidating, and even a little gross to most non-Japanese people. Even more surprising? The simple nigiri and maki rolls we think of as “traditional” sushi are relatively recent inventions, too. This episode, we’re going back to sushi’s origins as a cheesy-tasting fermented fish pickle, to tell th...
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEric C. Rath· Guest0:03
You find it in high-end restaurants, of course, but you can find it in Chinese restaurants, you can find it in supermarkets and gas stations, in ballparks.
Nicola Twilley· Host0:12
You know, I was just in Mexico, and at the Mexico City airport, there's this traditional sushi bar right there.
Trevor Corson· Guest0:19
You can just find sushi in almost any location. Highbrow, lowbrow, you name it. It's pretty incredible.
Cynthia Graber· Host0:26
And everyone is eating it. My 12-year-old niece basically can't get enough sushi. She'd eat it all the time if she could.
Speaker 40:33
Parents are going broke from their kids' sushi obsession. A Wall Street Journal article claims for some families, sushi has replaced pizza as the birthday party staple, and parents are paying a heavy price.
Cynthia Graber· Host0:44
When I was a kid, I'd never heard of sushi, but today it's everywhere and it's everything.
Eric C. Rath· Guest0:50
Like sushi pizza, sushi burritos, you know, [laughs] and on and on and on. So whatever you can do with a sandwich, you can do with sushi. It's so flexible.
Cynthia Graber· Host0:58
But so how did sushi take over the world? How did we get here?
Nicola Twilley· Host1:01
We got old, Cynthia. I hate to break it to you.
Cynthia Graber· Host1:04
[laughs] Okay. But really, it wasn't that, that long ago that sushi was basically unknown in America. How did it become so popular that you can find it in a gas station?
Nicola Twilley· Host1:13
Well, and while we're talking about ancient history, it's not that, that long ago that sushi didn't even mean raw fish on top of white rice. So how did sushi go from being a Chinese pickle to the California roll we know and love today?
Cynthia Graber· Host1:27
And what does all this have to do with World War II, the movie