Sushi can trace its routes back many centuries, probably to China where raw fish was salted and coated with a layer of cooked rice to help preserve it. The form of sushi we eat today originated about 200 years ago in Japan. The availability of fresh fish was the reason why sushi became so popular, with 2 specific styles emerging over time.

Kansai-style

In the Kansai region around Osaka, rice merchants served decorative ‘packages’ of rice combined with other ingredients. The conveniently packaged Kansai-style sushi is made predominantly with cooked ingredients and comes in various types and styles.

Kanto-style

Seafood and fresh fish were more readily available in the Edo region surrounding Tokyo. In this region, sushi was served as a slice of raw fish over a small ball of vinegar rice. This Edomae-sushi, or the popular nigiri is the most familiar Kanto-style sushi in international sushi cuisine today.

Maki sushi (Rolled sushi) is the most popular and identifiable type of sushi throughout Japan and the United States. A layer of seasoned rice and other ingredients are rolled into a seaweed-wrapped log, with the help of a bamboo mat, then sliced into rounds. Traditional maki sushi is rolled with the seaweed (nori) on the exterior, and sushi rice and the other ingredients in the interior of the roll.

New styles

The introduction of the nigiri sushi in the 1960s created a new wave of sushi cuisine in the USA. ‘American-style’ sushi maintains the traditional nigiri, maki and temaki forms (meaning ‘hand roll’, temaki calls for encasing the rice and other ingredients in a seaweed cone), but incorporates new menu items and flavours. Today, it is common that American sushi chefs create their own ‘signature rolls’ for their menus, to demonstrate their creativity.

As part of the new wave sushi cuisine, Uramaki (Inside-out roll) was created in America, this new variety of sushi is rolled backward. Unlike traditional maki rolls, nori and ingredients are placed in the interior of the roll and are surrounded by sushi rice. The best known example of uramaki is the California roll.

URAMAKI – The history behind the California roll

Uramaki was created because Americans had trouble eating nori. While Americans dining in the early sushi bars enjoyed the food, they preferred to not see the seaweed. To remedy this, the pioneering Chef Mashita at Tokyo Kaikan, in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles created the inside-out roll. This development is widely believed to have fuelled sushi’s early success in the United States, and has led to hundreds of variations on the first uramaki. Interestingly, the American style uramaki sushi is beginning to find its way across the Pacific to Japan. Bringing innovations in sushi-making back to the traditional styles in Japan is another step in the cuisine’s evolution.