Secrets of the sushi masters: how to order Japanese food like an expert

Sushi is both commonplace and a luxury in 21st-century London. Supermarket cabinets groan with boxes of chilled rice topped with fish and seafood for under a tenner; elsewhere in the capital, London’s glitziest postcodes are in the midst of an omakase gold rush as tasting menus push the cost of the average Japanese restaurant bill ever more skyward. And prices are unlikely to come back down to earth anytime soon: rising seawater temperatures will make sushi-suitable fish even scarcer.

At the heart of all this is a style of eating that can be traced back at least 2,500 years, to when fish was fermented with rice vinegar, salt and rice, though the sushi that we eat today — raw fish draped over vinegared rice — is still recognisably what was invented on a street stall in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1824.

Sushi, of course, isn’t simple: as well as nigiri (rice topped with raw fish) there’s maki (fish rolled up in rice and seaweed), temaki (sushi handrolls enclosed in a seaweed cone) and and cucumber and with raw fish swapped out for crab). And for many diners, no sushi experience would be complete without its rice-free equivalent, sashimi.