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During the final months of the pandemic, one of the few things that allowed me to get out of the routine was ordering food from home. In the town where I live, which is eminently residential, there are a lot of bars and restaurants, and since 2020 the use of ordering food through platforms like JustEat multiplied.
The point is that the years have gone by and, little by little, I've realized that I've been losing my love for eating out.
Before the pandemic, going to a new restaurant, trying exotic food or letting myself be surprised by a menu, was a small thrill that, nowadays, seems to have completely vanished. It makes me very angry, because it's something I really enjoyed... but nowadays I enjoy much more almost anything I make myself or my parents (who cook a lot and very well).
By far, the food I like less and less is sushi. And not because I don't like sushi itself, but because I think that the boom we have had in Spain with places that offer the product, has been terrible for the way it is elaborated.
Sushi in Spain, and I'm afraid in much of Europe, is becoming “hamburgerized”, with more and more sauces, bigger size and a greater variety of crazy ingredients. As if that were not enough, in Spain it is not legal to offer sushi with fresh fish, because since 2006 it is mandatory by law to freeze the fish for a certain time before it can be served raw. The reason? The proliferation of cases of anisakis. I am not an expert, but I think that making sushi with frozen fish already limits the quality level we can reach in a restaurant.
On top of that of course: imagine you have a restaurant and you want to offer a varied sushi menu. Is it really enough for today's consumerist thinking to have only different types of fish at your disposal? Of course not! That would mean giving up on younger customers who want to fill their stomachs with sauces, fried items and ingredients that have nothing to do with tradition! And of course you need the rolls (because why are you going to make nigiris if you can make rolls) to be eye-catching to earn a few likes on Instagram! No boring recipes!
I don't know much about sushi or cooking in general, but I believe that the quality of a nigiri lies in its ingredients (few) and in the perfect balance within the wonderful and complex simplicity that defines it. Bite-sized, without fireworks, and with few but intense flavors.