A cool guide to sushi etiquette

The only one I really would avoid is passing things between or touching chopsticks together. This is reminiscent of Japanese funeral rituals and thus considered rude to do at the table.

The others are more about common sense and trying to help you enjoy the sushi as the chef intended:

• They are bite-sized pieces, designed as a flavour combination, so don't break them up in any way
• If you don't want rice, sashimi is a good way to get that
• Putting too much soy sauce on the rice can make it fall apart
• (real) Wasabi is delicate and mixing it with soy sauce will certainly destroy its subtle flavour. In any case in a high-end place the sushi chef will have added everything that's intended as part of the flavour combination before serving the sushi, so adding stuff is not necessary

But again, these are suggestions. Enjoy the sushi how you like, you're not hurting anyone.

Now in fairness we dont know how high end this Sushi place is, if its a place where your paying for the experience its more understandable but It does read a little bit passive agressive.

Lemmites love being difficult thran bastards.

Yep. To turn the tables, is anyone going to stop you if you order a well-done steak and douse it in ketchup? Probably not unless you’re at a very high end establishment, but will it come off as uncultured, rude to the chef and raise a few eyebrows? You bet.

Likewise, there are Italian places where they will outright refuse to cut your pizza for you or to put parmesan on seafood pasta. British high tea is loaded with rules for serving and consumption order. Lots of cultures have these rules and expectations.

This is a helpful guide to general politeness and etiquette in a culture that highly prizes those things. It’s meant to be helpful to those who care. Why people are shitting on it as some show of defiance is beyond me and comes off childish as all hell.

I switch my knife and fork as I need to use them, knife in right hand when I need to cut and fork in right hand to eat, that's all I know how to do 🤷

Of course, the one that you make.

But if you are going to have it from a chef who says so at their restaurant, show some respect to their culture or else spend your money elsewhere.

That's not usually the case in a high-end sushi place. The chef will prepare your orders one by one and serve them out as soon as each is completed, so you will get one piece at a time.

I too am looking for the answer to this. Like are you supposed to eat the entire roll in 30 seconds? You're not even tasting it at that point. I'm hoping 30 seconds per piece.

I finally got a chance to have real wasabi at an expensive place. I did mix some in the soy sauce heh

None of this is mandatory, the sign says so. They're social norms, not legal rules. It's just saying "this is how this food is consumed in its original country, and breaking these norms may result in inadvertently offending someone or embarrassing yourself", which might be something you'd like to know if you plan to travel to that country, or simply to try experiencing it in the traditional way - after all, most social norms have a hidden logical reason. Many of these exist simply to avoid making a mess.

You're free to eat however you want, however some cultures do place a lot of significance on food and how it is consumed. People in Italy will lose some respect for you if you try to order a Hawaii pizza, put ketchup on pasta, or use a knife improperly. The same goes for Japan and many other places. You'll still be served and probably treated with superficial kindness, it just depends on how much weight you put on your experience vs that of others.

I assume it's fine as long as you don't get any on the rice

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarf

but funny, yeah

All within 30 seconds after waiting 20 minutes to get a tray of 4.

It's actually culturally appropriate to eat sushi with your hands if you want, making the turn over dipping easier. The only reason they say not to dip the rice side is the worry that it'll soak up too much soy sauce and the fish flavor will be overpowered. But it's not that big a deal.

The passing food from one set of chopsticks to another is pretty strictly avoided in Japan though. They pass bones like that as part of funerary rites so it's pretty closely wired into Japanese people as a cultural taboo.

But yes, you're supposed to flip the nigiri 90+ degrees when dunking. It's why I usually just stick to the sashimi. 9/10 chance I drop the chunk in the sauce. Can't go wrong with that.

Why is mixing a thing suddenly?

Definitely not new, people have been doing this since at least the 90s, when I was a kid.

I also know plenty of Japanese people who say dipping the rice lightly into soy sauce is the correct method, so take literally any "sushi etiquette" guide with a grain of salt.

Eat your food in whatever way brings you joy. Anyone that says otherwise is a pointlessly-gatekeeping idiot.

People in Japan do it all the time. Ideally, the chef would get the proper amount of wasabi on everything and you wouldn't need/want to do it, but that is not always the case. It is generally looked on more favorably to dab some wasabi on each piece rather than mixing, though.

It depends. In really high-end and authentic sushi restaurant, there is already wasabi between the fish and the rice. You are supposed to dip the fish side in the soy sauce only.

On the other hand, it's okay to mix the wasabi if the sushi is not prepared that way. People do this even in Japan.

I mix my wasabi and soy sauce every time. I also dip my sushi in this mixture rice-side down. I’ve never had anyone complain about this. If any sushi chef ever does complain I will just leave and never give business to that gas station again.

It's just personal preference.

I learnt it from a chef in Japan in 2009, and I assume he had been doing it for many years at that time.

Generally, that's something done at a sushi train restaurant where the dishes won't have wasabi in them already. I'm guessing these notes are for a sushi restaurant where the chef prepares the sushi specifically for each customer, so if you wanted wasabi they'd put it in the sushi itself.

Sushi is supposed to be bite-sized. In my experience this is not always the case in practice, but the idea is that you should just pop the whole thing in your mouth.

And why not chew it off?

Last time I had sushi (about a week ago), I tried a place I'd never tried before. I ordered some sashimi and they were huge. If I'd eaten those in one bite each, it would have been like that game "chubby bunny". But then again I don't really know how authentic this particular sushi place was. Tasted great, though.

I want to say it's some reason a long the lines of "it was masterfully creafted in such a way that the only best experience is to eat the whole thing at once, and to do otherwise is to insinuate a lack of respect", with the disclaimer that I don't actually know if that's what it is.

Don't chew it off because the rice will go everywhere. But if you've got a plate then your fine.

It's quite possible they simply make their sushi smaller, depending where you live. Americans tend to make things a size or two bigger than a lot of the rest of the world.

The context of this sign being in a sushi restaurant would be the key here. In higher-end, "omakase" sushi restaurants, you'll be served a set of sushi piece by piece as the chef makes it in front of you. Typically you'll want to eat it as soon as it is placed on your plate.

No, you broken chopstick, you dab a little on your sushi if you want extra. Moreover, most of the wasabi in the West is just green horseradish. Real wasabi is a root that comes from a river and tastes nothing like what we commonly find outside of Japan.

The tradition of adding it to sushi remains even if the wasabi we're given isn't wasabi.

Real wasabi is way more expensive than $3.