The Top Japanese Restaurants in St. Louis, Missouri

Standard Sushi and Some Exotic Dishes, Too

The roots of Sushi go way back to the 4th century BC in Asia. Originally it was a way of preserving the fish. The cleaned and gutted fish were kept in rice so that the natural fermentation that occurred helped to keep the fish from spoiling for up to two months. When the fish was finally consumed, the rice was discarded. Eventually this practice spread out of Southeast Asia to China and then finally into Japan. The Japanese like to eat rice with their fish, so they started consuming the fish/rice mixture while the rice was still edible and the fish was partly raw. Hence the birth of Sushi as we know it today.

Japanese food is famous for using ingredients not usually eaten by Westerners. There's the raw fish and rice (Sushi) and cut pieces of raw fish without the rice (Sashimi). They also like squid, octopus, and salmon roe as well as a nasty (to me) tasting fermented soybeans they call natto. Although not as common as the fish, you can also still find cooked locusts and bee larvae in Japan. Mix these up with a little shiokaro which is salted squid intestines and you got one yummy meal. As an appetizer, try some miso soup with the whole crab inside.

I must confess that I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Japanese food and raw fish in general. A lot of folks extol the value of eating raw foods. They say that it is a lot more healthful because the cooking process destroys a lot of the vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients. In India they believe that your body is all set up to digest the natural uncooked foods, and cooking just adds another step to the process and stresses the digestion. Others say that the rising popularity of Sushi in particular in the United States since the advent of the automated Sushi machines in the 1980's raises some health concerns because of the increasing incidence of food-borne illness. This makes it particularly important to find a good Sushi chef. Here are some outstanding places to have Sushi and other Japanese food in the St. Louis area: