Unacceptable in sushi

[Barnum]

And if I may add to the cream cheese discusion...  anything with cream cheese that is THEN deep fried.  I understand the desire to have something that sounds safe but that is just going too far and has been pretty nasty when I've tried it.

[Minerva]

Familiar flavors/textures help them get past the idea of raw fish.

 A simple cucumber roll is a better way to introduce others to sushi and when they are waiting for it, you can explain that there are lots of options that are actually cooked like shrimp, eel, crab, etc.

Don't disagree. But I haven't had much success getting male acquaintances to order an all-veggie roll. I'll try the cooked shellfish gambit next time.

[shoeshine boy]

I agree about the mayo and cream cheese. yuk! I don't agree about the vegetables. I love a good avocado or kampyo roll. 

[Loundry]

[HaagenDazs]

"Crab salad" is what sushi restaurants do when they can't sell enough of the fake crab sticks, so they mix the stinky, rotting fake crab sticks with mayonnaise in an futile effort to hide the trawler net stink.  Then they serve that in whatever roll that would normally call for a fake crab stick.  I think it's insulting.  The last sushi restaurant we ate at served us a California roll with crab salad.  We complained.  "It's a different style" was the server's apologetic.  We demanded that they remake it with (fake) crab stick and they complied.  A few minutes later, another roll we ordered arrived ... with "crab salad" in it.

F.

It's not an uncommon practice and as long as the seafood is in fairly good shape, I think it's acceptable.  Trawler net stink, no.  Getting use out of something before it goes bad, OK.  For instance, another example that I read on Taka's blog is that the "older" tuna is what is turned into the spicy tuna rolls at sushi restaurants.  Same idea as what you mentioned Loundry - it's basically raw tuna salad at that point.

[Loundry]

The thing that killed me about the cream cheese and the mayonnaise was that there were about eighty rolls on the menu, each one printed with its ingredients beside it.  I'd see a roll (number 27 of 80) that started off looking good ("Yellowtail, avocado, masago...") and think "that sounds good", and then BAM! I'd read "cream cheese".  Dammit!

I wanted to do this:

cat menu | grep -v 'cream cheese' | grep -v 'mayo(nnaise)?'

And could have amended it to do this, if they would have been up-front about the dishonest use of "crab salad":

cat menu | grep -v 'cream cheese' | grep -v 'mayo(nnaise)?' | grep -v '"crab salad"'

But I didn't have a neural interface to accept the menu in text format.  Technologically impaired, I had to rely on wetware and scan the list trying to mentally mark which rolls contained the offending ingredients.  It was difficult.

F.

[Foodgeek]

Sushi does not mean raw fish. 

Sushi actually denotes the rice preparation. A dish of composed, short grain rice, seasoned with rice wine vinegar, salt and sugar, combined with seaweed, vegetables, seafood that is raw or cooked and other ingredients is sushi. Sashimi is raw fish by itself. A dish that contains neither sushi rice nor raw fish is another dish entirely.

I actually don't have any objections to anything that's on anyone's list here, even with cream cheese or surimi (Krab with a 'K'). I think that one particular chain has an extraordinary tendency to blob all of their sushi rolls with gloppy mayo-based sauces, and that makes me not want to go there, but in general I think mayo can work well with fish, and the Japanese are very fond of mayonnaise, so it's not inauthentic.

What's a little puzzling to me is the idea of serving spoiled surimi. Surimi has a much longer shelf life than any regular seafood, because it's stabilized with all of those other ingredients (starch, sugar, etc.), and for the same reason, it's easy to freeze and to keep frozen right up until minutes before you serve it, if it's in stick form. I've never even seen spoiled "crab" sticks anywhere, much less in a sushi restaurant, and yet you say you've had it served to you? That's odd. Tell me where this was because I don't want to go anywhere near that restaurant.

Actually, real, fresh crab meat smells a good bit stronger than even the oldest surimi I've ever eaten, so this is puzzling.

[Loundry]

I actually don't have any objections to anything that's on anyone's list here, even with cream cheese or surimi (Krab with a 'K'). I think that one particular chain has an extraordinary tendency to blob all of their sushi rolls with gloppy mayo-based sauces, and that makes me not want to go there, but in general I think mayo can work well with fish, and the Japanese are very fond of mayonnaise, so it's not inauthentic.

I love untraditional as long as it tastes good.  Untraditional sushi rocks -- you can put things like roasted garlic in it.  I dislike the mayonnaise in sushi because it tastes and feels gross to me.  (On a BLfgT, however, it's delicious.  Weird, that.)

What's a little puzzling to me is the idea of serving spoiled surimi. Surimi has a much longer shelf life than any regular seafood, because it's stabilized with all of those other ingredients (starch, sugar, etc.), and for the same reason, it's easy to freeze and to keep frozen right up until minutes before you serve it, if it's in stick form. I've never even seen spoiled "crab" sticks anywhere, much less in a sushi restaurant, and yet you say you've had it served to you? That's odd. Tell me where this was because I don't want to go anywhere near that restaurant.

Actually, real, fresh crab meat smells a good bit stronger than even the oldest surimi I've ever eaten, so this is puzzling.

I'll have to take your word for it, but it's happened more than once where we've been served this "crab salad" in place of fake crab stick, and it always tastes spoiled.  Keep your eye out for what appears in the California rolls.

[Foodgeek]

What's a little puzzling to me is the idea of serving spoiled surimi. Surimi has a much longer shelf life than any regular seafood, because it's stabilized with all of those other ingredients (starch, sugar, etc.), and for the same reason, it's easy to freeze and to keep frozen right up until minutes before you serve it, if it's in stick form. I've never even seen spoiled "crab" sticks anywhere, much less in a sushi restaurant, and yet you say you've had it served to you? That's odd. Tell me where this was because I don't want to go anywhere near that restaurant.

Actually, real, fresh crab meat smells a good bit stronger than even the oldest surimi I've ever eaten, so this is puzzling.

I'll have to take your word for it, but it's happened more than once where we've been served this "crab salad" in place of fake crab stick, and it always tastes spoiled.  Keep your eye out for what appears in the California rolls.

Oh, I've eaten lots and lots of surimi. I don't actually seek out California rolls, but I've eaten more than my fair share, and even at sushi buffets. Never seen spoiled surimi anywhere, even when I've let it sit in my own fridge for weeks on end.

However, here's a story that pertains to this that I just remembered: Three seasons ago on Top Chef (the season that Blais appeared on), when they did the blind taste test to test all of the cheftestant's palates, one of the biggest things that tripped them up was the surimi vs. real crab meat. More often than not, blindfolded, the chefs picked the surimi as being texturally, aromatically and taste-wise "higher quality" than the real crab. It was much easier, by comparison, to pick out the better quality butter or the Reggiano over the domestic parm.

I'm just saying that if you've had something that tasted like spoiled crab salad in a roll at a sushi restaurant, there's a pretty good chance that it was because it was real crab. And it might have even been fresh. I've definitely had surimi that tasted better than some of the crab meat that I've eaten.

[Loundry]

I'm just saying that if you've had something that tasted like spoiled crab salad in a roll at a sushi restaurant, there's a pretty good chance that it was because it was real crab. And it might have even been fresh. I've definitely had surimi that tasted better than some of the crab meat that I've eaten.

I believe you.

The last time we had snow crab at home, I thought it was quite gross.  I would have gladly eaten surimi instead of snow crab.

[terry]

I like mayo in some rolls. I don't see what's wrong with that. I also like cream cheese.

It may not be authentic Japanese, but it can be good sometimes.

That said, I would never order anything like that though.

Oh yeah, I don't think rolls should be deep fried though.

[Loundry]

I like mayo in some rolls. I don't see what's wrong with that. I also like cream cheese.

It may not be authentic Japanese, but it can be good sometimes.

That said, I would never order anything like that though.

Oh yeah, I don't think rolls should be deep fried though.

Authentic shmauthentic.  There's nothing wrong with you liking mayonnaise in sushi rolls.  Likewise, I like some rolls that are deep fried.  It's a matter of taste.

[uOTPia Dweller]

Likewise, I like some rolls that are deep fried. 

Deep fried is what they do to rotten, tasteless fish in lieu of throwing it out. The deep frying gives it a subtle taste.

[Foodgeek]

Likewise, I like some rolls that are deep fried. 

Deep fried is what they do to rotten, tasteless fish in lieu of throwing it out. The deep frying gives it a subtle taste.

Heh. I'll have to pass that on to Linton Hopkins at RE, regarding his "Tower of Crab" topped with a soft shell crab - fried, of course. What else would one do with soft shell crab?

But yeah, I like the more subtle flavor of soft shell crab, compared to some of the other types of crab. I don't often prepare crab at home, and I'd have to admit that I enjoyed my homemade salmon patties (made from canned salmon) a good bit more than I liked my crab cakes, given a cost vs. enjoyment analysis.

[KoPP]

I like mayo in some rolls. I don't see what's wrong with that. I also like cream cheese.

It may not be authentic Japanese, but it can be good sometimes.

That said, I would never order anything like that though.

Oh yeah, I don't think rolls should be deep fried though.

Japanese cuisine embraces mayo - the 'Kewpie' brand is all over Japan. They supposedly put it on just about everything...