Cultural Gastronomy: What Sashimi and Cheese Fondue Taught Me

 

 

Nothing reveals cultural differences quite as clearly as food.

Something considered a delicacy in one country can be described as “disgusting” in another.

Forty years ago in London, I experienced both sides of this cultural divide.

One day at school, a Swiss friend asked me,

“Japanese eat raw fish, don’t they?”

I said yes, and he replied,

“Ugh.”

How awful. How could anyone call something as delicious as sashimi “disgusting”?

“Raw fish” does mean fish that has not been cooked. But the expression can also conjure up an image of someone taking a fish straight from a tank, a river or the sea and biting into it whole, head and all.

I tried to explain by using Italian carpaccio as an example. I told him that Japanese people ate fresh fish cut into thin slices — sliced fresh fish — rather than simply eating a whole fish raw.

I explained that fish carpaccio might be served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, whereas Japanese people dipped theirs in soy sauce.

He seemed to get the general idea. At least, he understood that we did not eat fish raw by biting into it head first.

Even today, articles introducing Japan on the internet often describe sashimi simply as “raw fish”.

Perhaps the expression has simply survived from the days when people first needed a simple way to explain sashimi. But to someone unfamiliar with the custom, the words “raw fish” may conjure up an image of eating a fish whole. Perhaps it is not surprising that someone might react by saying, “Ugh.”

Some time later, my Swiss friend told me that he had tried fish carpaccio. I asked him what he thought of it.

“Not bad,” he said.

I was impressed that a classmate who had grown up in landlocked Switzerland had actually tried raw fish. I was relieved that he seemed to like it.

A few months later, my family and I were looking for somewhere to have dinner in central London.

We came across a large shop window displaying oysters, fish and other seafood.

We had no reservation, so we asked whether they had a table for us. They did, and a waiter showed us inside.

However, just as we were settling into our seats, the waiter who had let us in called loudly towards the kitchen:

“Japanese customers who really know their fish have arrived! Is everything all right with the supplies?”

He sounded quite serious.

When he came back to take our order, I told him,

“We're not experts on fish, so please don't worry. Could you tell us what the chef recommends today?”

The waiter went back to the kitchen. After a while, he returned and said,

“Everything on the menu is recommended.”

There was fish carpaccio on the menu.

Since we rarely had an opportunity to eat raw fish, all of us ordered it as a starter.

After we had finished ordering, the waiter came over to put down our forks and knives. Then he asked,

“You may have some soy sauce with it, if you wish. Would you like some?”

I translated this for my parents in Japanese. They immediately worried that soy sauce had a strong smell and might bother the other customers.

I explained this to the waiter, and once again he disappeared towards the kitchen.

A little later he returned with large plates of white-fish carpaccio. Then he placed a tiny dish on the table.

“This is soy sauce,” he said. “If you use only this much, I don't think anyone around you will notice.”

And with that, he returned to the kitchen.

We cautiously picked up pieces of fish that had very little olive oil or balsamic vinegar on them and dipped them into the soy sauce.

The unmistakable taste of white-fish sashimi spread across my tongue.

There we were, in a restaurant we had stumbled upon in the middle of London, eating thick slices of what tasted just like sashimi.

Could there have been a more wonderful coincidence?

We had not tasted sashimi for so long that my family simply fell silent and kept eating. Before we knew it, the plates were empty.

It was bliss.

If I had been allowed one more request, I would have asked for wasabi. That would have made it perfect.

We carefully wiped the little dish clean, making sure not a drop of soy sauce was left, and finished the generous serving of carpaccio with the rather strong flavour of balsamic vinegar.

To this day, I have no idea whether a Japanese customer had complained about the food before us or had asked for soy sauce. But we were all touched by the waiter's thoughtful gesture.

I still remember that my father left an unusually generous tip that evening.

A few months later, we went to the Swiss Centre in central London. I don't know whether it still exists today, but at the time there were Swiss souvenirs and other goods displayed on the ground floor, with a restaurant upstairs.

The year before, my family and I had taken a whirlwind trip around Switzerland, and we had never forgotten how delicious the cheese fondue had been there.

So that evening, we quickened our steps towards the restaurant at the Swiss Centre, looking forward to another meal covered in cheese.

The cheese fondue did not disappoint us.

We had bread, along with vegetables such as broccoli, and tucked into the bubbling pot of cheese in front of us.

We were making quite a fuss about how delicious it was when one of the staff appeared, pushing a trolley carrying an enormous wheel of cheese.

It was so large that I instinctively stood next to it to compare our heights.

Even allowing for the trolley being about fifty centimetres high, the half-wheel of cheese came almost up to my shoulder.

I had never seen such a huge cheese before.

How was something like this made?

What did it taste like?

And what on earth were they about to do with it?

“You seem to like cheese,” the man said. “So we're going to make something special for you.”

He took out a small, heated metal tool and pressed it against the cut surface of the cheese. The cheese began to melt with a sizzling sound, and he skilfully scraped the melted cheese onto a small dish of diced potatoes.

“This is called raclette,” he explained. “It's only a light little dish, so you'll still have plenty of room for your fondue.”

We talked with him afterwards about cheese-making in Switzerland, and that evening we went home full of delicious cheese and vegetables.

The next day, I told some of the Japanese friends at school,

“We had cheese fondue at the Swiss Centre.”

They all recoiled.

“Disgusting!”

“How can you eat something that smells like that?”

Some of them actually pinched their noses.

“What about pizza, then?” I asked. “That has loads of cheese on it too.”

They agreed that the cheese on pizza was delicious, but cheese fondue was simply too smelly to eat.

The Swiss classmate I had told about sashimi was watching all this, and he looked astonished.

He must have understood what the Japanese students were talking about from the words “cheese fondue” and the way they were pinching their noses.

Then he asked me whether I really didn't mind the smell of the cheese.

Far from minding it, I told him, I thought a meal containing that much cheese was heavenly.

He seemed satisfied with my answer. But the reaction of the other Japanese students seemed to have landed like quite a body blow.

He had tried raw fish himself and found that it was not so bad. Yet here were the Japanese students rejecting one of Switzerland's proudest foods as smelly.

He had understood their reaction simply from their body language — the pinched noses and grimacing faces.

Perhaps it came as a shock to him.

Just as it had been a shock to me when he told me that raw fish was disgusting.

Years later, after I joined a travel company, I suggested that we might include cheese fondue in one of our tours.

I was told,

“Cheese fondue is too smelly. Japanese tourists complain about it. We serve oil fondue instead, where meat and vegetables are deep-fried in oil.”

Fondue is made by melting cheese with white wine. The wine needs to be heated properly before the cheese is melted into it. With Japanese group tours, where the meal may be scheduled for only an hour, there is a possibility that the fondue will be served before enough of the alcohol has evaporated.

What tastes delicious depends on where you come from.

Sashimi — fresh fish carefully prepared and cut into thin slices — may seem like an extraordinarily strange way of eating to people who have no tradition of eating fish raw, unless it is properly explained.

Cheese fondue is much the same. Like many fermented foods, it is perfectly possible for some people to love it and others to find it difficult to appreciate.

The distinctive smells of cheese and wine come together in fondue, and if it is not prepared and served at just the right stage, it can make for a rather disappointing experience.

Perhaps that is why not every Japanese person will necessarily enjoy it.

I have gained some confidence in explaining sashimi to people from other countries. But I still wouldn't have the courage to promote cheese fondue widely in Japan.

Unless someone was a real cheese lover, I probably wouldn't suggest going out for cheese fondue together.

For a while, my family even bought a fondue set — the special pot and little burner — and enjoyed cheese fondue several times a year.

That was about thirty years ago. My parents were still in their forties, and I was still in my teens, so we could manage such a rich meal without too much trouble.

Being able to eat as much cheese as we liked at home, without worrying about the smell or bothering anyone else, was pure bliss.

These days, we no longer eat fondue because of our family's efforts to keep our cholesterol under control.

Meanwhile, I hear that restaurants serving not only sushi but also sashimi have gradually become more common overseas.

Forty years ago, I was told that “raw fish” was disgusting, and I met people who thought that cheese fondue was unbearably smelly.

A lot has changed since then.

But perhaps the word “delicious” has a way of bringing people together across differences in countries and cultures.

What I experienced may now belong to a bygone era. But good food still has the power to make people happy.

Sometimes I find myself thinking that it would be wonderful to sit down with my family again over a huge plate of carpaccio and a bubbling pot of cheese fondue.

I wonder whether the world has changed too much for that now.