1

You ever eat sushi stateside?  I always wondered if the difference is that great in the quality....  I'm not talking about sushi from Publix, but from an average sushi bar you'd find in your average American city. 

Now that I'm thinking about it, I live in Columbia, SC, and for a city of our size we've got at least ten restaurants that have a sushi bar.  Seems kinda high for a city in the South...

2 I loved to eat sushi in the States. I've found that the quality is similar, to my palate. That is, you can pay a pile of money for excellent sushi, have affordable good sushi, and find places that make bad sushi. There seem to be less bad sushi places here than in the States, but then again, I lived inland in the States, so even the good places had to ship the fish from somewhere distant. While I'm no chef, those that are tell me that good sushi must be very fresh fish; and here, that's easy to obtain.

3 I suspect the main difference is that stateside sushi places will offer rolls tailored to American tastes, and leave out the traditional offerings that would seem particularly weird to us. I bet you can't find to many Philadelphia rolls over there, for instance.

4

There are a number of restaurants that cater to Americans; I strongly suspect that I could eat Philadelphia rolls there. Except that, I never liked Philly rolls anyway. I don't like Cali rolls either.

But I don't go to the places that cater to Americans very often, because (a) they're more expensive, (b) the usually contain drunk Marines, (c) as long as I'm here I want to eat real local cusine. Which is actually not standard Japanese; the Okinawan culture is really a synthesis of Japanese and Chinese ways. So the local food is really fusion cuisine, which is a good thing in my book. Hybrid vigor perhaps?