Japanese cuisine is full of many different types of foods.  Watch Food Network one day when they’re highlighting Japanese food, or flip on the Travel Channel during Bizarre Foods with Anthony Zimmern and you’ll see that the range of Japanese cuisine spans much farther than in some others.  Being a relatively small country, you’d expect foods to all be the same, but whether you’re eating an entire course of turtle (from raw to soup), live baby octopus, or tender kobe steak, what most people think of when they think of Japanese food is sushi.

Here in the United States, many people cringe at the thought of eating sushi since their belief is that they’re just eating raw fish, but that’s not the case.  They would be surprised at the complexitiy that they can find in some sushi restaurants.  Often misinterpreted as just being raw fish, sushi encompasses a wide range of various flavors and items.  Traditionally, sushi consists of vinegared rice, topped off with other ingredients ranging from vegetables, raw (or cooked) seafood, and even meats.

Sushi can also be had in a variety of other ways, including being wrapped in nori, or seaweed.  These are called maki, or rolls.  While not the most traditional these days, you can often find customized sushi rolls at restaurants that have a variety of things inside, and on top of them.

My favorite sushi of course, are the ones that consist of raw fish.  Just having the raw fish by itself is not sushi, but sashimi, so adding that rice component is an integral part of a sushi meal.  The raw fish (actually seafood in general) comes in all types of flavors.  Tuna, salmon, yellowtail, halibut, and shrimp are some of the most common.  Even within these there is variation in the texture and tastes.  For example, you can get albacore tuna, bluefin tuna, fatty tuna, just to name a few.  The more adventurous crave things like sweet raw shrimp (rather than cooked) accompanied by it’s fried head of course, uni (sea urchin), salmon or smelt roe (eggs), monkfish liver, and other more exotic things.  Some establishments even serve beef and horse sashimi.

As for picking a sushi restaurant, there are a ton of choices.  Most are the generic places, that may have good rolls.  As a rule of thumb, if there are pictures of the sushi rolls, the rolls are probably the best things they have, as the fish isn’t as fresh, and they’ve probably gotten creative with what the roll consists of.  The best places are the ones with omakase, or chef’s choice.  Here, you sit and have the sushi chef decide what you’re going to eat for you.  Just trust them, it’s almost always worth it, and you’ll often get fresher food, and try exotic fish that you would never have otherwise ventured into ordering.

Sushi is a delicate meal that you should take your time with.  With the proper time, everyone can enjoy it.  Just don’t let the word “raw” scare you away from such a treat!