Writ 1133: Eric Leake
Third Essay: Ethnography
- Zach Quinn
Ethnography of Sushi
Den
Sushi Den on Pearl Street in
Denver looks like a restaurant out of the television drama Entourage. The
building that houses it lacks a sign. It’s as if customers are already supposed
to know where they’re going. Upon arrival, valets take your car for you for
free. This accommodation aids with the difficulty of parking around Pearl
Street and allows the restaurant to leave Bentleys and Range Rover’s outside
its front door. This touch shows the types of customers that eat at Sushi Den
and the prestige of the restaurant itself.
I was talking to the bartender
about what Sushi Den does best and that is make sushi. I learned from him that
Sushi Den gets fish flown in from 26 different locations around the world. The
restaurant owner’s brother lives in Japan and attends the market there every
week to pick out the best types of fish from the market. Smoked salmon comes in
from Scotland and other types of fish come from places like California and
South Africa. The fish gets flown in three or four days per week. It comes in
at least two times a week from Japan alone. To make their sushi they use modern
techniques. Kaori M. Kubo, Yukari Ogawa and Masako Horikoshi talk about the
typical way to make sushi that is still popular in Southeast Asia, China and
Japan, “Funazushi, which is one type of Japanese fermented sushi, is a
processed food with a specific flavor made from crucian carp (Cyprinus
auratus), from Biwa Lake in Shiga, and rice” (Kubo 1). This dish carries a
taste that many don’t like but it is good for you. In the previous journal
mentioned, they studied the compounds present in Funazushi, finding high levels
of lipids and proteins. Use of traditional wooden boxes occurs occasionally but
they don’t ferment the sushi in the traditional style.
The restaurant features two
cocktail bars, one sushi bar, a private dining room and the main dining room. It
is decorated simply with a few potted plants and candles placed around. The
tables and booths have one cloth white napkin, one wrapped pair of wooden
chopsticks, one small bowl for soy sauce and one appetizer plate to start for
each place setting. When customers are seated, their waiter or waitress greets
them with hot towels. If customers want metal silverware it seems they must
ask. Most customers however demonstrate their abilities with chopsticks. Some
humor can be found in the difficulty that certain patrons show in using these
utensils but their persistence is admirable.
Large tables are mostly families. Those
that aren’t families seem to be on dates, double dates, or business meetings. There
seem to be very few friend groups meeting at Sushi Den for dinner. It seems
that a good amount of the customers are over the age of 30. There are a few
young customers but they are at the tables that seem to be related. This I
conclude is due to the high pricing of food items. California rolls are the
most affordable sushi at $6.00. The special rolls are as much as $18.00. Dinner
entrees are anywhere from $14.00 to $28.00 each.
Customers that are old enough to
do so order alcoholic drinks anywhere from Sake and Sapporo to Dirty Martini’s.
The restaurant also has an extensive wine list that customers often order from.
The customers that do drink seem to be throwing them back. These tables are
also a lot louder and livelier as expected. Most everyone seems to be social
and talking quite a bit. No one seems to be on their cell phones or distracted
by a television playing sports. The latter is true because there simply isn’t a
TV in the place. The people sitting at the cocktail bars are mostly alone and
seem to be waiting for somebody. I fell into this category as I did my
observations. Those at the sushi bar seem to be interacting less with each
other because of the nature of the seating. They do still turn to talk to one
another but often interact with the chefs behind the counter. These chefs
diligently do their work creating the art that sushi is while also catering to
the needs of customers when the wait staff is absent.
Works Cited
Kubo, K. M., Ogawa, Y. and Horikoshi, M. (2008), The effects
of free amino acids, nucleic compounds, and volatile constituents of funazushi (fermented
sushi of crucian carp (Cyprinus auratus)) on preference. J. Sci. Food
Agric., 88: 1259–1265. doi: 10.1002/jsfa.3216
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