In the milieu of American diners, who readily latched onto Jiro, this search for the perfect and pure was an indicator of the “authenticity” of Jiro’s work, particularly in comparison to the mass-market sushi that was more readily available in the United States. Though “Instagram food” as we now know it hadn’t quite taken hold at the time of Jiro’s release, food trends were skewing in the stunt direction: sushi pizza and the “sushi burrito,” for example. For some American diners, the kind of Edo-style sushi that Ono created appeared as a corrective. The word “authenticity” would be bandied around by both diners and the food media establishment as a value judgment; pursuit of the “authentic” subtly marked a restaurant as superior for its ability to resist trends and concessions and to provide diners with the “real deal” of a cuisine, untouched by globalization and gimmick.
Originally titled Planet Sushi, Gelb has said that Jiro’s aesthetic was largely influenced by nature documentaries like the BBC’s Planet Earth. There’s no famous narrator in Jiro, but Planet Earth’s particular style of storytelling emerges in Jiro’s evocative Philip Glass soundtrack, and in its attention to the good, the bad, and the ugly in its subject matter: the life cycle of a sushi dinner, from the chaos of the Tsukiji Fish Market to the final glistening pieces of nigiri. Its expansive cinematography emphasizes long, almost sensual shots that linger as chefs slice ruby-red ahi tuna and massage octopus until it is perfectly tender, making human actions feel as organic or instinctive as a whale gracefully gliding through the ocean. “We try to use all the tools of cinema, from sound, music, cinematography, all these things to draw the audience into the character in the way that any film would,” Gelb told Deadline of his perspective in 2019. The expansive, sweeping shots feel like a deliberate attempt to draw parallels to the beauty of the natural world, inspiring introspection — or even awe.
Of course, austere temples to sushi existed in the U.S. pre-Jiro; the “Japanese turn,” as defined by historian Samuel Yamashita, had infused American fine dining with Japanese influence since the 1980s. But after Jiro Dreams of Sushi debuted, the game changed. In the past decade, counter after counter of Edomae-style omakase — a sushi style with origins in Tokyo, served with no menu but rather face-to-face at the discretion of the chef — has opened across the country. There is precise, pure sushi served by a master in a serene, sparse setting, with diners finagling for reservations. But most of all there is exclusivity, created by both venue size and cost. For better or worse, in the decade since Jiro Dreams of Sushi was streamed into our homes, there are more places than ever to enjoy a similar experience. And fewer people who can actually afford it.
It's lunch and we're short-staffed. An American woman stops me. Indignant that her filet de bœuf is not à point as requested, but most definitely saignant. The sliced-open, offending piece of meat's rose centre stares up at me like an old wound. What she has is what French chefs would consider 'medium', I say politely, and perhaps she should try it first. Using terms more suited to the Pass, the lady thrusts the plate into my hand and tells me to get out of her sight. As a waiter, you quickly get used to the fact that people believe they can talk to you like a lower species. With no plateau to hand I pray to God I'm not caught by a manager. Carrying dirty plates on one's hand is fine, but never something with food on. And when you do carry dirty plates you must carry as many as possible. It must look impressive. It's part of the show.
As wildly varying photos of “tomato sandwiches” flooded my timeline, I asked myself: what is a sandwich? Of course, the fun is in the fact that any new rule I might make about the definition of a sandwich will provoke the creation of other rules by other people. Arguably, a sandwich is a site for the pure play of rules, where the only basis for rule-making anyone need observe is: do I like it? Even if there is a long embedded rule about how to make a sandwich, it is inevitable that each person who enacts this tradition will intervene with their own revised understanding, their own palate, shaped by their own situation in life.
The locals of Los Alamos have a nickname for their little California town: Lost, almost.
Not just because it’s teeny-tiny—the town’s main drag, Bell Street, is only seven blocks long—but because, for a long time, it was the kind of place that people intentionally didn’t talk about. “The rich and famous came here to the Santa Ynez Valley to escape the limelight,” explains Daisy Ryan. “They came here to be left alone.”
You may know the history, and you may think you know what’s coming, but don’t be so sure. O’Farrell and Lucrezia, with her “crystalline, righteous anger,” will always be one step ahead of you.
Fairy Tale is both sweeping and self-contained, comic and scary, touching and bleak.
But not all lineages are familial, and not all ancestors are related by blood or marriage. Sometimes, we find or go searching for figures from the past because we're seeking to recognize some part of ourselves that we don't see mirrored in our families or communities.
For Casey Parks, a journalist for the Washington Post, Roy Hudgins was that person. And her first book, Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery, follows her attempts to uncover his story while rediscovering her own along the way.
If Agatha Christie remains elusive, it’s not for the want of those trying to find her. Janet Morgan’s official biography of 1984 and Laura Thompson’s equally detailed but ultimately more impressionistic portrait of 2007 have both been updated and reissued; and there are numerous other analyses that try to understand how the woman who routinely described herself as a housewife became Britain’s bestselling novelist of all time. Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at the age of 85, from the misperceptions that cling to her life and her works of fiction.