These days feeding your soul is as important as feeding your face. A Japanese proverb says that if you have the pleasant experience of eating something you have not tasted before, your life will be lengthened by 75 days. One evening at a sushi bar could add years to your life. Sushi is the aristocrat of snack food and worthy of being a meal in itself. The most perfect fish and shellfish are served uncooked in gemlike portions with a delicately seasoned rice. Sushi, the combination of raw fish and seasoned rice seems so exotic to us, it’s supremely logical food in Japan.

Sushi began centuries ago in Japan as a method of preserving fish. Cleaned raw fish were pressed between layers of salt and rice and weighed with a stone. After a few weeks the stone was removed and replaced with a light cover and a few months after that, the fermented fish and rice were considered ready to eat. Some restaurants in Tokyo still serve this original style of sushi called “narezushi”, made with freshwater carp. It’s flavour is so strong that it obscures the fish’s identity altogether and narezushi’s something of an acquired taste. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that a clever chef named Yohei decided to forego the fermentation process and serve sushi in somehting resembling its present form.