Sushi restaurants have only been popular in the U.S. during the late 20th century. A staple in Asia, sushi restaurants specialize in Asian delicacies and now can be found in major cities all over the U.S.
While sushi restaurants are nothing new in Asia, here in the United States, you did not commonly see a restaurant that specialized in sushi until the last decade of the 20th century. Even then, you needed to be in a large metropolitan area before you would see sushi even included on a menu.
However, the popularity of sushi has recently grown in even smaller cities and town throughout the United States because of a supermarket trend to have sushi chefs working in the store and selling sushi rolls to consumers. Sometimes, these grocery store sushi chefs even allow customers to sample the sushi to dispel the 'raw fish' fear that so many people relate to sushi.
While raw seafood can sometimes be a component of sushi, not all sushi contains raw seafood. Some sushi does not contain seafood at all. Sushi is actually vinegary rice while any raw fish added to the sushi in a thin strip is sashimi.
Most sushi restaurants offer several varieties of sushi including rolls that include sashimi, rolls with some type of cooked fish and rolls that are vegetarian. The California Roll is a very popular sushi roll that does not include any fish, raw or cooked.
In most metropolitan cities, sushi restaurants have become as popular as other Asian restaurants are. Once discovered, most people enjoy sushi enough to eat it time and again.
Many sushi restaurants offer sashimi rolls in fixed price sets that the chef selects each day. The restaurant grades these sets by the quality of the fish and sells them to customers according to a price scale that coincides with the quality.
The matsu set will be the most expensive set and the ume set will be the least expensive set. In between the matsu set and the ume set is the chiku set, which is moderately priced.
