Sushi God

Raw salmon, sashimi, the whole thing—I could eat nothing but sushi for the rest of my life. The texture of it on my tongue, perfectly steamed rice, a soy sauce thick enough to actually taste. I’d do it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, every meal, until food poisoning or some ocean parasite took me out. And I wouldn’t even care.

Nozomu Abe runs a restaurant in New York called Sushi Noz, and in certain circles he’s stopped being human and become a god. The precision with which he works the day’s fish, the refusal to make anything optional—it’s almost religious. He’s built this place that doesn’t compromise, that could sit in the middle of Tokyo and nobody would know the difference.

What gets me about people like that is the understanding that one perfect piece, handled exactly right, means more than a thousand careless meals. It’s the kind of thinking I recognize from my own work—the moment you stop asking is this good enough and start asking is this exactly right. They’re questions that lead somewhere different.

I’ll probably never eat at Sushi Noz. It would destroy me. But I like that it exists. That there’s still a corner of New York, or any city, where someone’s committed enough to something that specific, that small. Where obsession still looks like the right choice.