Goldberg convinced Kanai to hire him as an MTC representative on the spot. While attending a trade conference in Chicago, Kanai met Harry Goldberg, an outgoing and gregarious smooth-talker, one of those guys who was just born to sell. He did, however, have a job lined up as the President of Mutual Trading Company, a fledgling importer of rare Japanese delicacies (interestingly, the same company to bring edamame to America). We begin when Noritoshi Kanai arrives in the United States in 1964 with nothing to his name except a small family and a history of entrepreneurial failures. How did two sushi rogues initiate this revolution?Īnd how did Ronald Reagan-not someone usually associated with the word “progressive”-become a walking advertisement for this strange foreign delicacy? Well, it’s one hell of a story, that changed the course of sushi history. They’re famous signature dishes-gateway drugs to a cuisine-despite the fact that none of them are popular in their supposed motherlands. Or perhaps think of it as what Chicken Tikka Masala (created in Scotland, many claim) is to Indian cuisine.
The California Roll is the Spaghetti Bolognese of sushi.
These comforting manipulations (or bastardizations, if you’re a purist) are the reason why you don’t think of sushi in the same way you do Soylent Green, or the monkey brain soup from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was made with rice on the outside of the seaweed, and it contained avocado instead of the traditional fatty tuna-both of which are distinctly non-Japanese additions. The California Roll can be thought of as a culinary Trojan Horse. It wasn’t their invention, but it was a side-effect of their actions. The unlikely tip of the spear of this revolution? The California Roll. Fewer people still would recognize their names in Japan, and neither of these men were famous sushi chefs, but they somehow brought the first sushi bar to the United States. If asked to identify the figure behind the American sushi craze in a police lineup, you’d pass right over Harry Goldberg, a Jewish entrepreneur from Chicago.īut Goldberg, along with his friend Noritoshi Kanai, a lanky Japanese immigrant, was part of one of the most underrated odd couples in the history of American cuisine.
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