Sushi

Raw

THE SUSHI ECONOMY

Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy.

By Sasha Issenberg.

323 pp. Gotham Books. $26.

Reviewed by JAY McINERNEY

When I first tried sushi in Tokyo in the fall of 1977, I thought of myself as an intrepid culinary adventurer who, if he survived the experience, would return to America to tell the incredible, unbelievable tale of the day he ate raw fish on rice balls. Someday, perhaps, I would tell my children. By the time I returned to the States two years later, I found sushi bars in Midtown Manhattan; within a few years, nigiri sushi became the signature forage of the Young Urban Professional. As for my children, they eat sushi three or four times a week. They developed a taste for it when they were living in Nashville, Tenn., which, though it lacks any convincing French or Italian restaurants, has several fine sushi bars. From very different perspectives, “The Zen of Fish,” by Trevor Corson, and “The Sushi Economy,” by Sasha Issenberg, attempt to account for the transformation of sushi from a provincial street snack to the international luxury cuisine of the 21st century.