Stars of Sushi

It’s hard to imagine that not that long ago, most of us would have shuddered at the idea of eating raw fish. Now you can find sushi even in supermarkets, and as Americans have embraced this Japanese tradition, we’ve made it our own, creating variations like the foie gras and tenderloin sushi that’s the rage at one San Francisco hotspot. (Some young Japanese chefs are coming to the United States for precisely that kind of creative freedom; the Japanese are purists about their sushi, and it can take years for a novice chef in Japan to progress beyond the art of making the rice.)

Sarasota’s appetite for sushi in all its variations seems insatiable, with new places popping up all over town, each with its own passionate following. We decided it was time for a tasting to choose the most sensational sushi in town, and with the help of the Ritz-Carlton Members Beach Club, we did it Sarasota style—on a gorgeous stretch of Gulf-front sand, under a custom-created Asian-style tent, as the setting sun painted the sky a thousand shifting shades of purple and pink.

We invited eight of Sarasota’s leading sushi restaurants to prepare two different kinds of sushi for our distinguished judges. Their entries could be as traditional—or as Americanized—as they wished. While the chefs, their ingredients, knives and garnishes in tow, gathered in the beach club’s third-floor kitchen to put the finishing touches on their creations, the judges assembled on the beach.

Our eight judges brought a wide variety of experience and tastes to the judging table. Bird Key’s Brenda Johnson has tasted sushi all over the world on her travels with husband Brian Johnson, lead singer for the rock group ACDC. Public defender Laurence Eger is such an avid sushi fan that he was once told by a temperamental chef he had eaten enough for the night and would not be served any more. John Signorelli, executive sous chef at the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, who lived in Japan for a number of years and is married to a Japanese woman, knows an amazing amount about sushi ingredients and presentation and could even tell us about the various styles of cutting the fish. Pharmaceutical rep Emily Guttridge, a former Japanese exchange student, also brought Asian expertise to the tasting, while hip young downtown dweller and hairstylist Kelly Smith developed her love for sushi right here in Sarasota. Judge Rick DeFuria, who until now always avoided raw fish, bravely agreed to serve as our sushi virgin. And as SARASOTA Magazine’s associate food editor, I was there to taste, watch and record—but not to judge—as was editorial director Pam Daniel. We secretly agreed we had the best assignment of all.

While the judges settled onto their orange silk cushions and sipped white wine, I was in the Ritz-Carlton Members Beach Club’s kitchen with the sushi chefs, who were drawing numbers to decide the order in which their offerings would be presented. This was a blind tasting, so each entry was identified only by number to the judges, who scored each entry—which, remember, included two different samples of the restaurant’s sushi—on taste, presentation and use of ingredients.

As the judges readied their clipboards and pens, up in the kitchen the chefs, seven of them Japanese, solemnly bowed to each other. Then I joined the group on the beach, and two Ritz-Carlton servers followed me down, bearing trays filled with artful plates containing Entry No. 1—which, unknown to the judges, of course, came from Utamaro.

We all stole a look at Rick DeFuria as he picked up his chopsticks and gazed at the piece of yellowtail sushi on his plate. "I love fishing for yellowtail, so why not try it?" he said gamely. He dove into his first-ever piece of sushi and came up smiling. "It’s wonderful!" he said, and everyone applauded. This sushi was very spicy—too spicy for many of the judges, although Kelly Smith liked "the nice crunch" and Brenda Johnson decided "the intense after-burn" actually made it "outstanding." And everyone agreed that critical element of sushi—the rice—was wonderful.