In Los Angeles, $3,000 tuition now gets you two entire months of training (and presumably) a certificate as a real, live sushi chef — suitable, no doubt, to make Walmart-worthy tekka-maki to your heart’s content.
As ELV has noted, the training in Japan takes ten years.
Read all about it here, and prepare to get depressed.
There you go again, prejudging the guilty, except for the OJ in LV trial, I suppose …
Recently, it was Mexican food. Now, it’s Japanese food. What’s next, John??
Check out this article:
http://www.downtownnews.com/articles/2008/09/22/news/09-22-08-news07.txt
According to Junichi Ihara, the consul general of Japan in Los Angeles, a sushi chef in Japan traditionally trains for two years.
Of course, it takes a lifetime to perfect any culinary art, ehh?
Two Years versus Two Months:
Mathematically Two Months is one-twelfth of Two Years. But that doesn’t begin to describe the difference. The idea that anyone is proficient at anything as intricate as sushi after two months is absurd. Sushi is an art, and how many artists are really ready for a public showing after two months of sculpting? Selection of fish is probably more than two months of instruction in the Japanese system. I hope this program does not fly simply because I don’t want to be sitting across from a two-month-old sushi-chef who may or may not know the difference between unagi and sake (the fish, not the drink).
We need more sushi “chefs” in this country like I need another mortgage payment. It’s bad enough we live in Vegas and have 356 sushi restaurants off-strip (yes I exaggerated the number for emphasis but my point is there are too many) when places like Yellowtail, Sushi Samba, Nobu and the countless other money-machines also go after the same surplus of fish. There can’t be that much high-quality fish out there for purchase…and having someone who is slightly more skilled at preparing this delicacy than I am right now is scary.
Actually, we need more sushi “chefs” in this country like Las Vegas needs another steakhouse, and that’s part of the problem. All of these sushi places are opening up with less-than-qualified sushi “chefs”.
bwdining, it’s likely that you have already sat across a sushi chef with no formal training or no basic understanding of traditional Japanese sushi (BTW spicy tuna roll is NOT traditional Japanese sushi. Neither is California roll, if you didn’t know already). Whether it’s two months or two years or two decades, if the sushi chef doesn’t have the basic talent & understanding, forget it!! What would be nice is having a sushi restaurant sponsor one of its workers (who’s committed to be a sushi chef) to go to this sushi school for some formal training, then go back to the restaurant to practice what they learn. Or go work at one of Katsuya Uechi’s sushi restaurants.
John, maybe I’ll take that two-month course at the sushi school, and afterwards, I’ll serve you some fugu.