Dipped in soy sauce and wasabi - a hot horseradish paste - and served with slices of pickled ginger to cleanse the palate, eating sushi is a sensual business that's about textures as much as tastes."Japanese food is very popular right now because people think sushi is cool. But behind its image, sushi is very healthy and also very skilful to make," says Yukiko Takahashi, one of the organisers of the Original Sushi Competition. It started in 2001, and is open to all age groups (last year's winner was a 15-year-old schoolgirl). It's now part of Eat-Japan 2005, a new festival that celebrates Japanese food and culture, culminating with the competition final in October. The aim is to encourage a more creative approach to sushi, and winning recipes in the past have included mushroom sushi, sushi eggs benedict and miso mozzarella sushi "Sushi is very adaptable," Takahashi says.
"It doesn't have to be traditional."But sushi's adaptability doesn't in itself explain why Japanese food in general has become so fashionable of late. Chef Rainer Becker, who cut his teeth at the Park Hyatt hotel in Tokyo, opened the award-winning Zuma in London three years ago. He followed that up last year with Roka, a restaurant specialising in robatayaki cuisine in which the food is grilled over a brazier. He claims that the appeal of Japanese food is down to a number of factors "It's the whole experience. You don't eat big plates of it, it's not three conventional courses With Japanese food you share it, you can order small dishes So you need more sensory experience, more flavour. "For all the virtues of Japanese cuisine, however, Becker believes the reason behind its current popularity can be summed up in one word: Nobu. The Park Lane restaurant in London's Metropolitan Hotel was the first European venture of the celebrated Japanese chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, whose fans include the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and Tom Cruise.
Launched in 1997, its fusion of classic Japanese cookery with South American influences, not to mention the fact that Robert De Niro was one of Mitsuhisa's partners, helped brand it immediately as one of the coolest places on London's culinary map. More importantly, it had the substance to accompany the style, reflected by it being awarded a Michelin star within its first year. "I think Nobu really opened the doors to modern Japanese food, and made my life easier," says Becker.Not just his. The increasing number of Japanese restaurants has meant that it's become much easier for restaurateurs to buy the products they need. Sea urchin isn't the sort of thing stocked by your average wholesaler, and even less exotic seafood needs to be extremely fresh if it's to be safely eaten raw. "When you have only a few restaurants serving a particular food, the supplier has a hard time getting small quantities from the native country," Becker says.
