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The Elusive Wasabi

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There’s an imposter at the sushi bar. I’m not talking about the artificial crab—the artificial crab is genuine artificial crab, a red-painted scrap of pollock. And I don’t mean the Americanized variants of Japanese cuisine either, the California rolls or the sake bombs. They don’t claim to be anything they’re not.

No, the imposter takes the form of a dull green mound that waits alongside your ginger before erupting into your sinuses and sending tears streaming out from behind your eyes. You know him as wasabi. His real name is horseradish.

The majority of sushi bars do not serve real wasabi. This surprised me. Rummaging through my roommate’s arsenal of Japanese culinary supplies, I located a bag of the stuff and read off its ingredients.

The explosive green paste making inroads on the North American palette is little more than a combination of dried horseradish, mustard, and blue and yellow coloring. Occasionally, a brand will throw in some concentration of dried wasabi power, but even then it’s the horseradish that does the talking.

So why aren’t we eating the real thing?

Actual wasabi is elusive, almost mystical in its rarity. It comes from the thick stem of a small, leafy plant—Wasabia Japonica—that normally grows only in select mountain streams in Japan.

The pH of the wasabi’s stream has to be just so, the water must be fresh, flowing and cool, and it must have the right mineral balance to keep the finicky plant alive for the two to three years it needs to reach commercial size. Once harvested, it doesn’t stay fresh for long.

Many high-end establishments that do serve real wasabi get it shipped over from Japan. But in recent years, pioneering farmers have been perfecting cultivation techniques, and they have begun to grow wasabi in North America. Because of its rarity, the plant commands around $100 a pound on the North American market.

“It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme,” cautions Doug Lambrecht, the CEO of Real Wasabi. Lambrecht’s farm in the mountains of North Carolina is the only commercial wasabi operation on the eastern seaboard. He has spent years overcoming setbacks in dealing with the plant, from parasites and turkeys in his crop to a landslide that took out his operation after its first year of production. Business is going well now, says Lembrecht, but wasabi remains so tough to grow that he’s helping potential competitors in the region get on their feet.

On learning all this, I knew I had to try the real stuff. My colleague and I went to OSushi, a swanky Japanese eatery in Boston’s Copley Hotel, where we could get a modest set of rolls without breaking the bank.

In the dim light and an ambience of French hip-hop, I asked the chef what he thought about fake wasabi versus fresh wasabi. He looked at me for a moment and shrugged. “No difference.”

I glanced at the huge lump of green play-dough sitting in a metal bowl next to him, and then over to the waitress, who was shaving a fresh wasabi stem against a specially designed copper grate. Even fancier places use shark skin.

When the waitress brought our order to the table, she leaned in. “Just for the record,” she says, “real wasabi is infinitely better.” We were the first American patrons she had known to order the real thing.

When she had shredded the wasabi stalk against the grate, a chemical reaction had occurred, producing an organic compound called isothiocyanate. It’s this compound that gives wasabi its kick. The plant originally developed the reaction to deter herbivores as they crunched it between their teeth.

Isothiocyanates are only stable for a short time, so sushi connoisseurs recommend eating wasabi between ten and fifteen minutes after it’s been grated. We dug in accordingly, ignoring the meticulous patterns of rolls on our plates. It was watery, mellow, and I could feel the wasabi fibers crunch easily between—Oh! Steam filled my head, my sinuses cleared too quickly, and my eyes went red with water.

The real wasabi was a different experience altogether; a plant, not a paste; hot, but not spicy—perhaps even worth the extra cost. But as recession gnaws on the land of fast food and Miracle Whip, I have a hard time seeing it really catching on.

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