Japanese Chef Creates ‘Micro Sushi’ to Get People to Love Raw Fish

In a video from the YouTube channel “Only in Japan”, head chef Yuki Sugeta and his apprentice Issei Meguro begin by laying out the minuscule pieces of fish which are placed on top of 1/3rd sized grains of rice. In fact, a single grain of rice is still too large and has to be chopped up into even smaller pieces.

Each piece of micro sushi has to be carefully assembled using a pair of very fine chopsticks in order to keep its shape. The set includes the tuna Akami, Tai (sea bream), salmon, Tamago (sweet egg),  Kohada (gizzard shad), and Tobiko.

Chef Sugeta reveals the idea for the micro sushi dish came to him 30 years ago when he wanted a fun way to introduce sushi to children, he simply wanted to make his youngest customers happy. “The idea was to get kids who didn’t love sushi to start to love sushi,” he explains.

While this intricate dish is not officially on the menu, the chef still serves up these minuscule nigiri sets today for free but only to first-time customers while the shop is not busy as the dish takes immense care and delicate hands to create.

And as for the taste, the sushi chef reassures the viewers that while the pieces are roughly 1/300th the size of a normal piece of sushi, the taste is still exactly the same. He says, “For the best fish, even cut small, it has a lot of taste.”