6 Years Ago…

How Duck and a Little Curiosity Launched My Sushi Career

There’s no way to get around the it. I am quite possibly the most unlikely sushi chef and people want to know how it is that a black female from Mississippi came to be a sushi chef. And my answer is always the same – it’s a long story, bits and pieces of which can be figured out from my previous blog. But for the elusive bits that I’ve never told? Well, you’ll have to wait for me to write a memoir.  And perhaps I will…one day.

I was contemplating the source of my obsession with duck, particularly when it comes to sushi.  (Some refer to me as the smoked duck sushi lady.) No doubt it came from my stint as the owner of a bakery and bistro in Starkville, MS called The Chocolate Giraffe.  The obsession stemmed from a sandwich called the Ben and Aaron, which I named after two friends – one who could speak no evil about duck and the other who would eat anything as long as it contained bacon. There was something special about that sandwich that kept people talking and soon duck, by default, became my signature ingredient.

When I began serving sushi at The Chocolate Giraffe, again a very long story, duck carried over as well. Back in those days, my sushi training consisted of books, second hand accounts from the two employees that had actually been to a sushi bar and the internet. But we quickly found that the sushi making supplies and ingredients we needed were hard to find in Starkville, MS. Without a local Asian market with a good stock of sushi ingredients and sushi grade seafood, we created our own blend of shicimi togarashi (Japanese seven flavored pepper) for spicy tuna and cold smoked our own salmon. Since I wasn’t familiar with the stigma surrounding sushi as not being a free for all create your own style cuisine, I created sushi menus based on ingredients that excited me.

Word spread quickly that we had good sushi. In fact, one of the most stressful points in my sushi career was when someone brought a group of businessmen from Japan to the restaurant for sushi. (I think only Toshi Sugiura or Morimoto having a seat in front of me at the sushi bar now could inflict the same sort of stress I experienced that night.) They actually opted to drive from a neighboring town, which had a well established sushi bar to come to The Chocolate Giraffe. Though I’ll never know their true thoughts on the experience, they ordered (and ate!) several rounds of sushi including some smoked duck. And through a translator told us they enjoyed themselves.

I found this old article from the February 2002 issue of The Reflector, the Mississippi State University newspaper, that talks about those sushi days. 

Marisa, Duck and Southern Style Sushi Make News in Japan 

The Hiragana Times, October 2005 on Marisa’s Southern Style Sushi Menu

“Menu includes bizarre nigiri such as duck crackling… Because Marisa doesn’t have the thought of remaining true to sushi traditions, she uses many ingredients not typically found in standard sushi.”