How entrepreneurs plan to bring sushi into the home

In Japan, training to be a sushi chef is an arduous business. Before the apprentice even gets near a fish, he (and it almost always is a "he": there are fewer than 200 female sushi chefs in Japan) is likely to spend at least three years perfecting such apparently straightforward tasks as knife-sharpening and floor-scrubbing. Learning to wash and cook the rice then takes three years, and a further five are devoted to learning how to clean and dissect the 63 species of saltwater fish, eight kinds of shellfish and 18 freshwater fish that comprise the sushi chef's repertoire. In all, the passage from novice to professional takes ten years to complete.

Is this protracted training necessary, or merely an example of excessive Japanese fastidiousness? According to Cheung Lee, head of training at the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain, the idea that sushi chefs need to undergo a gruelling apprenticeship is a myth. "The long training period reflects the highly ritualised nature of Japanese culture, its emphasis on precision and the idea that because something has always been done a certain way it has to be done that way in future," he tells me. At Yo! Sushi, chefs train for an average of three months, which Cheung claims is perfectly sufficient to master the rudiments of the trade.

In Britain, the past decade has seen sushi transformed from an exotic delicacy to a run-of-the-mill commodity, on a par with other global foodstuffs such as sun-dried tomatoes and olive oil. Where once it could only be obtained in a few specialised outlets, it is now available in shops and supermarkets throughout the country. Operations such as Yo! Sushi, replete with gimmicks such as conveyor belts and robotic waiters, have sprung up in British cities, and sushi's popularity as a lunchtime snack has ensured that the takeaway - or "pre-pack" - market is now big business.

The one domain that sushi has failed to conquer is the home. I am not sure why. Perhaps the ubiquity of ready-made sushi makes people reluctant to prepare it themselves, or perhaps people have a vestigial fear of raw fish that no amount of exposure to it in restaurants can entirely dispel. Sushi's exclusion from the domestic sphere, however, could soon come to an end. Earlier this year, two ex-City workers, Clive Hibberd and Peter Leak, launched a company called sushi@home, which hopes to encourage us to start preparing sushi for ourselves.

Hibberd and Leak are pinning their hopes on two mechanical contraptions that Leak, the creative half of the partnership, has invented. One is a compressing device that forms the blocks of rice for nigiri sushi; the other is a rolling machine that make it possible to mould neat nori rolls. The machines are easy to use and attractively designed and they make it a simple (and relatively skill-free) process to prepare restaurant-quality sushi. They can be purchased direct from the company's website (www.sushiathome.co.uk) or from upmarket department stores such as Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges.

When I visited Hibberd and Leak last week, I was struck by their energy and passion, and by the singlemindedness with which they had devoted themselves to their task. They are true entrepreneurs, obsessed by the thrill of invention and the challenge of persuading other people to share their faith in their products. In this, they are profoundly un-British. Rather, they belong to the tradition of the American kitchen pioneer, men who, in the decades following the war, made it their life's work to bring products such as the Chop-o-Matic and the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Oven to US housewives.

Will sushi@home succeed in the UK? Only time will tell. As a nation, we are not overly keen on kitchen gadgetry. Given this, it is a good thing, perhaps, that Hibberd and Leak have their sights on the US. They spend much of their time at trade fairs, hoping to strike deals with major US department stores. Their real hope, however, is to get on TV. "If we can start appearing on the infomercial channels, we can really start shifting our products," Hibberd says. In the meantime, it is safe to predict that the reign of the professional sushi chef, whether ten years or three months in training, has not yet run its course.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website