The art of eating

I am a person who loves to eat food.  There are those who eat to live and who live to eat; clearly, I am the latter.  One of the foods I enjoy eating is sushi.  Those balls of delectable rice-y goodness, covered by clean slices of fresh, chewy raw fish, those rolls of seaweed wrapped rice melded with morsels of fish and vegetables– with the slightly stinging pickled gingers and nose-pinching wasabi laden soy sauce… It’s totally delicious.  No doubt about it.

Eating, I realized in Paris, is as much of an art as cooking is.  In all the cultures around the world, there is a certain kind of etiquette that is considered to be proper during meal times– in European societies, it is to begin with the outer utensils (in total of which there are like 10.. -___-), in America, it is to refrain from burping or picking noses at the table, etc.  Recently, I came upon a random website that taught the basics of eating sushi.  That was when I realized that… I HAD BEEN EATING SUSHI WRONGLY ALL MY LIFE!  Horror of horrors.

Okay, not that I care, really, because no matter how I eat it, it will always taste sooo goood and it all jumbles up in my stomach anyway.  But, it was a gain of new knowledge to me and reading about the different ways to “properly” eat sushi showed a lot of the logic and values of Japanese food culture.  In the case that anyone goes to Japan or a culturally Japanese restaurant in the future, here are some of the basic tips.

1. Do not rub the chopsticks together. I know, this is a hard one; we just really want to get all those little bitty splinters out– after all, who wants to be stabbed in the mouth while enjoying this deliciousness?  Yet, it does make sense that doing so would be a bit gauche: not only do we seem like OCD freaks, but also it could pose an insult to the owners, like their chopsticks are high quality enough (this is pure speculation).

2. Do not put wasabi into the soy sauce. Eeps– but how are we supposed to eat it, then?  In all of its mustard-y, spicy, salty soy sauce-y goodness?  Well, apparently, the thing is that sushi chefs have already placed dabs of wasabi under the fish, determining what he deems to be the correct proportion of wasabi.  However, if more kick is wanted, then we always have the choice to add more.

3. It is acceptable to eat nigiri (rice + fish) with hands. *gasp*  The only thing is, sashimi (raw fish slices) must always be eaten with chopsticks.

4. When eating nigiri, pick up the fish and dip it into the soy sauce, not the rice; otherwise, the rice will soak up too much soy sauce and overwhelm the flavor of the nigiri.

5. The pickeled ginger is meant to be a palate cleanser, eaten between bites or different types of sushi.  It should not be eaten together with the sushi.  Aw…sad.  I love the combination of the sour ginger with the slightly sweetness and saltiness of my sushi!

6. Eat nigiri sushi in one bite. It sounds hard, but nigiri should be easier to eat than rolls.  I don’t know what we’re supposed to do when we eat a giant spider roll the size of a baseball… Force it in?  It can be quite fun to do that, actually, and hold competitions with friends to see who can eat it all in one bite.  But I’m sure that that would not be considered “proper etiquette”.  Haha.

7. When handling food not our own, use the unused end of the chopsticks, not the end we put in our mouths, so as not to be unclean and rude.

Art doesn’t have to be limited to just the canvas or theatre stage.  It can be found everywhere.  It is the birth of an idea, the process of creation, and the result in creativity.  Even the way we eat our food in our daily lives is an art.  Each different method, each different utensil we choose to eat with, each decision to mix and match– all of these are personal, individual choices that affect the final outcome of the taste and experience of eating.  These processes are creative in itself, not to mention the final combinations of taste that are diverse and thus, very creative as well.

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Gabby Park is a triple concentrator in Communication Studies, French, and History of Art.  In her spare time, she looks up restaurant menus that make her hungry and consequently dream about eating all the great food in the world one day.