How to Not Get Ripped Off at Sushi Restaurants

We spoke with John Daley of New York Sushi Ko about the industry's dirty little secrets.

Justin Bolois

"A sushi man is someone who puts fish on rice. A sushi chef thinks, tastes, and feels," said John Daley of New York Sushi Ko last December, distinguishing himself from other Caucasian practitioners who fail to honor the Japanese art form. The lack of diversity in both race and gender in this profession, he suggests, is a large issue with complicated roots that span centuries. But ideological battles aren't the only ones that threaten to challenge the "purity" of sushi's legacy. The everyday forms of eating and preparing raw fish, whether in conveyor-belt format or picked up from your local Duane Reade, do just as much damage.

"If you're paying $2.50 for your tuna roll and you don't live in Japan, you are doing it wrong," says Daley. "Japan can produce at that level. We have a 99-cent burger. That's okay as Americans, but a $2.00 roll in America? I wouldn't trust it."

In this era of convenience sushi, a new tradition has emerged, founded on the principles of "cutting corners" and deceiving customers in the interest of mass production. "The way Western society looks at fish is the way a customer looks at a stripper in a strip club. It's very objectified. It's very product-oriented and transactional."

Not all shortcuts in sushi-making deserve your scorn, though. When sushi rice is pickled, for instance, it can be stored for several days and re-used after steaming. "A lot of these 'tricks,' or smoke and mirrors, are excusable because it's under the guise of preservation," says Daley. "That's why sushi was invented. It's just done with far greater integrity at traditional places."

And then there are more blatant instances of misconduct—mislabeling fish so that you'll pay more for it, or seedy butchering practices that'll make you think twice about eating at large sushi houses. Daley's ultimate prerogative is to educate customers so that they can make better choices. From understanding why it's best to skip sushi on Sunday evenings, to the real reason why there are inside-out rolls, here is Daley's #staywoke guide to avoiding bad sushi habits.

Photo: Flickr/Samsoon Loo

Inside-out rolls were designed to fill you up.

Daley says: "When rice is put on the outside, you can use more rice. Rice is cheaper than fish, so they put rice on the outside to fill you up. There's more rice and the filler uses less fish."

Spicy tuna, oils, and mayo are used to hide flavor.

Daley says: "Spicy tuna was created to mask the flavor of rotting fish. So if you have fishy fish, which happens when it is hitting a day past its peak, you’ll cover it up with things like sesame oil, which is very aromatic, and spicy chili paste or oil. Fat, like in mayo, covers up taste. That’s why an omakase is an escalation of flavors: Start with the leanest fish and conclude with the fattiest. The fat coats the tongue. Your mouth gets blinded by the fat, blinded by the mayo. A lot of places will even add mayo to their California roll to stretch the product, and to mask the scent of older crab meat."

Hamachi collar is throwaway fish.

Daley says: "You can throw it in the garbage unless you order it grilled. So a lot of times people order hamachi collar and they think it is awesome, but it's really a throwaway. You’re really giving the sushi bar 14 or 16 dollars for garbage. Don’t do that. It’s not good."

Slow sushi bars don't move fish fast enough.

Daley says: "I always recommend that if you’re going to eat sushi at a more reasonable, approachable price rate, you eat at busy places. Busy places are going to be moving fish, which means they'll typically have a fresh supply. Even if it is not the most desirable of locations or if it’s not sought after in terms of destination, a busy restaurant will be moving fish."
Time your sushi outings to avoid Sunday dinners and Monday lunches.

Daley says: "For the most part, a lot of places—especially in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston—use the same fish company, which is literally a monopoly on the market. I would say that they're in 99% of sushi bars, and they are the sole purveyor of 75% or 80% of those sushi bars. I only use them for an emergency. The company is mainly outputting on Tuesday and Friday, and possibly Thursday. When you go to a Japanese restaurant on Sunday, that fish was received at that restaurant on Friday. The same fish was received by its purveyor probably Thursday morning, or if you're lucky, Thursday afternoon. And even before that, it was most likely caught on Tuesday or even Monday. By the time you are eating that fish on Friday, from that purveyor, it’s been out of the water one whole week. That's why I always say avoid Sunday. On Sunday I eat avocado-cucumber rolls if I need to sushi. Or I will eat stuff that I know is going to be fresh because it was super frozen, like a bluefin tuna. Things that are frozen that you can count on being fresh on off delivery days because it is caught to be frozen. Not we caught it, we are using it, uh oh we couldn’t use it so now we are freezing it."

Large sushi houses are guilty of not using a butcher as often as they should.

Daley says: "A lot of places that employ a fish butcher will only use him two days a week. He comes in and he cuts every fish on that day, wraps it in some bag, wax paper, of Bounty paper towels. Larger sushi houses in the city are guilty of this. How a place can call itself a fish bar but get fish once or twice a week blows my mind. I get fish everyday I’m open. I have 10 seats. Larger places with 100+ seats get fish twice a week. That fish gets processed the days that they are there. We wonder why our oceans are being depleted? It’s because we order food in such great quantities that it has to be processed in such great quantities."

Photo: Flickr/dumbonyc

Tartar is essentially sushi scraps.

Daley says: "Everything they couldn’t make sushi out of is going into your tartar. Anything they couldn’t sell as sashimi is going into their cooked dish, their hot dish, their pickled dish. Almost any tartar is going to require the addition of oil. It’s going to be 'justified.' You can add fat to anything to make that happen, to give it that silky texture."
Some sushi labeling is highly misleading, and even inaccurate.

Daley says: "As far as the biggest thing that I found with the mislabeling of toro is one time I went to a restaurant where they served a dish called toro tartar. It was because it was Spanish influenced and blah, blah, blah. Like toro, the bull. What I actually got was low-grade yellowfin avocado tartar.

Here's another one: Kampachi is not baby yellowtail. It never was and never will be. I don’t know if places are telling you that because they think babies are more expensive, like veal. 'It’s the veal of yellowtail.' No. It’s just a different fish. It’s more silky, it’s got a finer texture, and I would even say it’s for a more refined palette. If you walk into the door eating kampachi and someone hands you hamachi, you’re probably going to go, why? Why is this lump of garbage in my mouth? It’s cooking fish. I don’t know why people serve it raw all the time.

Some tuna served is actually escolar. That’s your white tuna. Don’t ever eat anything that says white tuna. They think they are selling you an elephant tusk. It’s not in the tuna family and it’s got as high or higher mercury content than swordfish. And you would never eat swordfish raw. Plus it's greasy.

Moreover, you’ll just see really creative names for fish. It’s a red snapper—it’s not from Japan. It’s not special in anyway but they’ll call it red porgy. Or it is a red porgy and they’ll call it snapper."

Kampachi (above) is not baby yellowtail. (Photo: Flickr/Rick)

In America you're mostly eating unagi, not anago.

Daley says: "In America, more often the one we are exposed to is unagi. Unagi is freshwater eel. It’s barbecued, slathered with sauce, it comes ready to come out of the package, butcher, and put inside of a toaster, warm up, and serve it. In Japan, sushi chefs don’t actually handle unagi because it’s freshwater. They only handle anago, which is from the sea. Freshwater fish is not used for sushi in Japan. It’s cooked much more."
Wasabi roe and other flavored fish eggs taste the same.

Daley says: "It’s just food coloring. There’s no different flavor among them. Try them all next to each other. It's just like the guy who says he can smell the difference between salt and sugar."

Cooked shrimp is usually a rip-off.

Daley says: "If it’s raw, chances are it has a little bit more integrity to it and it definitely costs more off the back. You can buy a cooked shrimp for 4 cents and sell it for $7 because you boiled it and put it on a piece of rice. That's offensive. It’s the most insulting thing to have on an omakase. It’s different when you have a piece of kuruma ebi and it’s been cooked moments before you walked into the door. You get it warm. That’s food."

Photo: Flickr/Calgary Reviews

Pink ginger is a false standard.

Daley says: "If your ginger is pink there is a problem. That’s food coloring. Pink ginger is like a 2% thing that happens naturally in the ground, but producers dye it anyway. If you ever eat a bite of regular ginger, you are never going to put the fake stuff into your mouth again. Why do they dye it? Pink is soft, warm, and inviting. Our first medicine is pink—nipples."

A lot of the wasabi you encounter isn't even wasabi.

Daley says: "Wasabi, that’s now mustard more than anything else. It’s powdered mustard covered in horseradish."