Sushi Arai

In sushi, as in life there are haves and have nots. At the much anticipated Arai, Karin and I met out match. We submitted willingly. One does not simply eat at Sushi Arai in Tokyo. One submits, gratefully to a quiet ceremony conducted by hands that know more than they say. Chef Usui stands behind the small intimate counter the way a poet stands behind a podium: without flourish, without apology. We joined a tiny coterie of fellow travelers. The young chef’s gestures are small but exacting, each one deliberate as a sentence that has been revised until only the necessary words remain. There is passion here, but it is not performative. It does not announce itself. It is, rather, intentional, the way a river is intentional about reaching the sea. The dinner happened at the very start of Sakura when the pink blossoms are slowly emerging intentionally and determined. So to were we when we tried to find the Ginza restaurant hidden away on a street corner with access only via an elevator. The was truly delightful. I do not use that word carelessly. Delight is pleasure that catches you off guard, that arrives before you have assembled your defenses against it. The fish was the freshest Karin and I have ever eaten, and I say this as someone who distrusts superlatives the way one distrusts men who smile too easily. Each piece carried the fragrance of a sea breeze over a spring sky, that particular scent that belongs to no bottler and no perfumer, only to the water and the wind and whatever tender negotiation occurs between them. Simply delicious, though “simply” is doing rather a lot of work in that phrase, as it so often does. What appears simple has been made so by years of discipline, by choices so refined they have become invisible. This is the trick of mastery: it erases its own evidence. We left Sushi Arai lighter than we entered, which is not a thing one expects to say after a meal. But Chef Usui does not fill you. He clarifies you. Thank you, Chef Usui. The body forgets most meals. This one, it will remember.