With the story of a Chinese man getting tapeworm after ingesting sushi blowing up across the internet, sushi lovers from Taiwan to New York are unsure whether or not it’s safe to continue eating one of their favorite foods. Luckily, as the pop culture magazine The Pitch writes, getting tapeworm from sushi, or any food, is exceptionally rare. This rarity is dependent on you knowing how to choose a sushi bar that puts the quality of food and its customers’ safety above all else. With these simple tips, you’ll never have to worry about whether or not yours is one of the few truly good sushi restaurants ever again.
What You Should Look for When Searching for Good Sushi Restaurants
- Look at the Squid…Seriously
- You Want Less for Your Dollar
- What’s in a Name?
It might seem ridiculous, but you can often tell the quality of the sushi served at your local sushi restaurants by looking at how they prepare their squid. As the popular Japanese culture and news site Rocket News 24 points out, if the squid on your sushi has been scored — cut at even intervals — you know that you’ve found a restaurant that makes fresh seafood, flavor, and customer safety a priority. Squid typically carries a parasite known as anisakis. Scoring the squid and removing the smooth outer membrane removes the parasite, while simultaneously improving the texture and flavor.
One of the most common gimmicks American sushi restaurants use to attract customers is the frightening “All You Can Eat Sushi” lunch. Sure, it’s cost effective, but it’s also a great way to consume tasteless, ill-prepared food. As the travel and technology focused Scout Blog points out, when it comes to sushi, you actually want less for what you pay. Great sushi requires great ingredients, and that necessarily means paying a little bit more to eat at good sushi restaurants.
For Tofugu, a well known source on Japanese culture, a dead giveaway of a terrible Japanese restaurant, sushi bar or not, is the name. In general, the words “bistro,” “teriyaki,” “Mt.Fuji,” or “Oishii” never translate to anything good. Think about it this way: if a restaurant’s name is indicative of its food, how can you expect anything authentic from a place that gives itself a French name, or one that takes on the name of a highly Americanized, over-sweetened, meat-laden dish like teriyaki? Sure, there are some restaurants with terrible names that serve authentic Japanese dishes, sushi included, but they are most certainly the exception to the rule.
How did you track down the best sushi restaurants near where you live? What sets them apart from the rest? Let us know in the comments below. References.
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