Below, the ‘Vulcan Roll’ in B’ham:
Gambit writes about a new sushi restaurant in Uptown (on Oak St), Chiba — and they refer to how they are in some instances using fruit rather than a sweet fish, a la the strawberry-satsuma roll. I enjoy the idea that they are using local ingredients like satsuma. Looking at their menu, they have a Crescent City Roll with oyster, and a Gulf Coast Roll with snapper. Very nice.
In Jackson, Little Tokyo serves a Mississippi Roll with catfish. I think Nagoya has a catfish roll, too, and Two Stik in Oxford — probably several more places, but I think Little Tokyo was first.
In Austin, Roll On does a chicken fried steak roll, called the Cholesta-Roll. And you know someone somewhere in Memphis has to be doing an Elvis roll, right?
A book called ‘Sushi American Style‘ featured a ‘Dixie Chicken Roll’ with fried chicken and coleslaw.
Every Sunday night — *every* Sunday night — at our home, Av and I get sushi from a really terrific restaurant about five minutes from us; we started this tradition when HBO was doing Sopranos and Six Feet Under on Sunday evenings, and it’s just one of our ‘things’. While I like bagel roll and super crunch and kaboom maki, I think all these variations above are fun. They may not be traditional, but as long as there are places doing ultra-traditional sushi, there has to be room for people to be inspired and fun.
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The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a website and an app that shows which sushi is sustainable and which to avoid (fresh water eel, and for certain avoid bluefin tuna). If you’d like some of the back-story on the political aspect of bluefin tuna extinction, read this, but prepared to be irritated. More here, too, from ABC News.