Roll of Honour

Last weekend I ate five of the finest pieces of sushi I have ever tasted, one after another, made by five of the UK’s top sushi chefs – along with 1,799 other people, delegates at the colourful ‘Hyper Japan’ event in London.

The sushi was not all I ate there: some deep-fried octopus balls with ginger (not actually octopus balls per se, but ball-shaped dumplings with tender pieces of octopus) were also very tasty, as was some delicious rich Japanese chocolate ice-cream. I also enjoyed the non-edible elements of the extraordinary event, from a ‘cosplay’ competition of people dressed up as characters from Japanese computer games to a range of clever, cool toys such as moving robots made entirely out of paper pipes.

But the sushi was the highlight: eaten by all those people over the course of the three-day event – the UK’s largest on Japanese culture - as part of the public judging of the UK Sushi Roll Championship, a competition which has been running since 2005.

All the sushi rolls created for the finals were memorable – from ‘Summer on a Plate’, in which Feng Sushi executive chef Silla Bjerrum used different parts of young yellowtail tuna to create a balance of textures, accompanied by a light sweetish miso dressing; to ‘Water Please!’, the tart, fiery creation of Moshi Moshi head chef Thomas Nam, fusing Korean and Japanese elements by combining salmon marinated in kimchi (spicy Korean pickled vegetable sauce) with pear and apple juice to bring out a natural sweetness.

The ‘Creamy Roll’, from SO Restaurant head sushi chef Tomokazu Matsuya, lived up to its name: simple but subtle, relying on the melting textures of top quality wild scallops and avocado without much accompaniment: a treat for the true foodie though not perhaps as show-stopping as some of the others with their wild sprouts of greenery and sauces.

My personal runner-up was the ‘Seafood Garden Roll’ from CHISOU head chef Dharmadsa Kodituwakku, multilayered flavours with tuna, salmon, amberjack, crab, daikon, shiso leaves and rocket with yuzu sauce all wrapped up magically with a wafer-thin but still crisp and refreshing strip of cucumber rolled outside the rice.

But top prize went to ‘Precious memories’, the creation of female sushi chef Asuka Kobayashi of Matsuri St. James’s, featuring salmon marinated in soy sauce and red wine, two differently coloured halves of sushi rice (one steeped in red wine), mascarpone, sun-dried tomato purée, capers, dill, basil, rocket, chives and Nori seaweed. It was served with soy sauce and red wine foam, and a sushi ginger and sesame crispy cracker (see picture).

The idea was inspired by Asuka’s childhood memories: the Italian influences stem from the fact her mother ran a pizza restaurant, and her home prefecture, Nagano, is famous for its red wine. The result took sushi to new dimensions. All in all, a great event: crowded, crazed and chaotic but a fascinating window onto a fabulous food culture.