Way back in 1987, Oliver Stone unleashed "Wall Street" into the cinemas. Gifting Michael Douglas his Oscar for "Best Actor", it tells the story of Bud Fox(Charlie Sheen) as a stockbroker who is prepared to break every rule in the book to earn his way into the rich list. I heartily recommend it; not only is it a great movie, but it's like a time capsule into what fashion was like during the 80's boom years and almost all of the fashion in the 80's can be derived from Darryl Hannah's character, Darian. Expect her character to assault the viewer with hideous clothing, the tacky interior decor, wooden acting, food combinations that are doomed to fail... there's one sequence about half-way when she's making the spaghetti while Bud is making the sushi using some poncey hand-driven contraption which churns out neat little blocks of rice (but not nearly as poncey as the electric spaghetti-maker).
Spaghetti and sushi? What next? Curry and croissants? Haggis fried rice? Still it was the 80's and if that was the fashion then, then so be it. I can just about remember when sushi came to the UK. It was, like everything else coming out of Japan at the time, small, expensive, fashionable, exquisitely neat and had a tendency to go terribly wrong after a day or two. Best of all for the shops and restaurants that sold it, it was cheap to make as you didn't have to cook half of it and you needed to eat a lot for a full meal. Strange how no-one ever commented that raw squid tasted revolting.
Thing is, real Japanese sushi chefs don't look like a cross between a kamikaze pilot and Gordon Ramsay with the knife skills of a Jack the Ripper as so often portrayed in the movies. In reality, they can dismantle a fish in seconds, a small handful of rice squidge squidge squidge dinner is served. And they don’t serve it with spaghetti or some little machine that does the shaping for you. After having lived here for over 3 years I have yet to see that contraption that Charlie Sheen was using on sale anywhere.
Spaghetti and sushi? What next? Curry and croissants? Haggis fried rice? Still it was the 80's and if that was the fashion then, then so be it. I can just about remember when sushi came to the UK. It was, like everything else coming out of Japan at the time, small, expensive, fashionable, exquisitely neat and had a tendency to go terribly wrong after a day or two. Best of all for the shops and restaurants that sold it, it was cheap to make as you didn't have to cook half of it and you needed to eat a lot for a full meal. Strange how no-one ever commented that raw squid tasted revolting.
Thing is, real Japanese sushi chefs don't look like a cross between a kamikaze pilot and Gordon Ramsay with the knife skills of a Jack the Ripper as so often portrayed in the movies. In reality, they can dismantle a fish in seconds, a small handful of rice squidge squidge squidge dinner is served. And they don’t serve it with spaghetti or some little machine that does the shaping for you. After having lived here for over 3 years I have yet to see that contraption that Charlie Sheen was using on sale anywhere.
Conveyor belt-style sushi restaurants you already know. Grab what you want as it trundles by and pay your bill according to the stack of over-priced colour-coordinated plates on your table. Sushi restaurants in Japan go one step further: Each table has a tub of green tea and a hot water tap at each table for unlimited drinks. There’s a slot at the end of each table down which you drop the plates and the bill is calculated automatically. But what if the sushi you want isn’t available?
Introducing, the touch-screen menu. Cycle through the pages, tap the picture of your choice and within minutes, the fishy consumable of your choice will emerge from the kitchen on the belt. And in case you should forget, it comes with a reservation notice attached and your table will bleep at you as it trundles past.
The key to eating sushi is not to let it dwell in the soy sauce otherwise the rice soaks it up and the whole lot disintergrates at the touch of a chopstick. The cost for filling two tums, one native, one foreign, was about 15 pounds in total. It was cheap, colourful, had taste and left you wanting to come back for more. The complete opposite to Darryl Hannah's Darian in Wall Street, in fact.
Ta-raa!
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