(via) We dig The Ten Commandments of Sushi, a series by New York-based writer Tom Downey with accompanying imagery by Japanese illustator Chie Ushio:

My first lunch at Yajima Sushi, in Tokyo, felt more like a kidnapping.

There were open spots at the counter. But the chef, Susumu Yajima, instructed me to take a seat nearby and wait. Eventually I was summoned to a place directly in front of him, and the attack began: Piece after piece in rapid succession, as Yajima barked orders at me.

“Eat now!” he said, milliseconds after passing me a glistening slice of buri(amberjack) atop shari (the finger of rice that forms the base of nigiri sushi). “Use your hand!” he upbraided me, as I reached for my chopsticks. He even instructed me to half-chew one piece before washing it down with sake.

Was it the taste of the fish, or some culinary variant on Stockholm Syndrome, that compelled me to return, and to keep returning? Either way, I fell in love with the low-ceilinged room, hidden in the basement of a nondescript building off a main road in Shibuya. And I came to realize that Yajima’s bossiness was an integral part of the appeal.

During another meal, as I followed his orders to the letter, I began to suspect there was something profound behind these edicts. Some were rudimentary and fairly common; others were unique to him; still others recalled sushi’s origins as Edo-era street food.

When I summoned up the courage to ask about this, his wife, Yoshiko, yelled from the kitchen: “He’s just strange!” Yajima nodded. “I’m just forcing my way onto my customers,” he agreed. But slowly, over the course of several meals, he opened up and told me more: How he’d become a chef; how he and his wife had run their sushi-ya together for almost 34 years; and how the story of his life, and this place, was encapsulated in his Ten Commandments of Sushi.

Read the entirety here.

TAKE ANOTHER BREAK