When I opened my phone and saw the multi-colored, overly-excited email from my SGA dorm representative saying that Harris dining hall would be serving sushi after spring break, all I could think was, “Oh dear god, why?”
My initial reaction wasn’t in response to the presence of raw fish— I love sushi, it’s one of my favorite meals— it was more so about the setting. “Harris?” I asked myself. “The same place that serves those weird little circles of bacon and gives me food poisoning from fully-cooked meats?”
It’s no stretch to say I was not optimistic about sushi coming from the dining hall, but I did try to challenge my own ways of thinking. “It’s time to decolonize my sushi-mind and think about the cuisine outside of the realm of swanky, dimly lit sushi lounges,” I told myself. Gone are the days of quality sushi being limited to pricey and exclusive restaurants in New York City and Los Angeles. In fact, some of the best sushi spots in Japan, such as Sukiyabashi Jiro, are 10-seat bars located in subway stations, and, since late 2017, some of the best sushi on the East Coast can be found in the Newark, NJ airport at the Tsukiji Fishroom, a mini version of Tokyo’s world famous Tsukiji Fish Market. These places challenge both the industry notions of what it means to be a “good” sushi restaurant, and the customer perceptions of where one can and can’t have fresh, delicious sushi.
In today’s hyper-globalized food system, it’s become easier than ever for unorthodox places to access high quality seafood for sushi-making purposes. Keeping this in mind, I decided that I had to overcome my fear (or, perhaps, snobbishness) and give the sushi from Harris a chance—maybe I’d be pleasantly surprised, and I’ve definitely had sushi from more questionable places. More importantly however, I felt it was my journalistic duty to sample the newest and most eye-catching addition to Conn’s food scene, even if it meant countless hours of intestinal distress and regret.
When I walked into Harris the Tuesday after we returned from spring break, the first thing I saw—after, of course, being hit with the wall of hot, stagnant air the dining hall is so well-known for—was two employees diligently crafting maki (sushi rolls) in the area where they’d normally be assembling Italian sandwiches. While I was searching for a place to sit, I saw a four person booth with what had to be a stack about 15 mini plates, all empty, except for some residual wasabi and pickled ginger, in the middle of the table. “This could be a good sign,” I assured myself, before heading over to the brand new sushi bar.
The miniature plates, usually used for desserts, were arranged on top of a blue tablecloth– a classy touch– and were topped with three unevenly cut pieces from one of the day’s two options: vegetarian and not. The vegetarian option that first day was a sweet potato roll with chives. It was good, if not a little bland, but was a solid vegetarian roll.
The non-vegetarian option that day was the spicy seafood roll. Rolled up with chives and cucumbers and coated with orange tobiko and sesame seeds, this roll looked beautiful from afar. When I got closer and saw the blend of mayo, crab mix, and cured salmon that filled them, I had to hesitate. “Is that cream cheese?” I overheard someone ask their friend. “Is it?” I found myself wondering, despite standing directly in front of its list of ingredients which had no trace of cream cheese on it. The spicy seafood roll was heavy on the mayonnaise, and not quite as spicy as I was expecting. I thought the chives were a strange choice, and overall this roll was kind of gross, but edible.
The next time they had sushi at Harris, the vegetarian option was the same. The seafood option that day was a spicy shrimp roll, again coated in orange tobiko. Every good sushi roll needs something to add crunch, and this one achieved that with asparagus, which I find a strange choice. The spicy shrimp mix didn’t have a particularly appealing look, but it was edible.
After eating sushi three times that first week– on Tuesday for lunch, on Thursday for lunch, and on Friday for dinner– I was conflicted. “It’s not great,” was my initial thought. But, keeping in mind that dining services had just begun this endeavor, I decided to give Harris more time to refine its craft. This way, the dining hall could work out the process and I could eat much, much more sushi–– for research purposes, of course.
As the next few weeks went by I sampled all of the rolls they offered, many of which repeated. The spicy seafood mixes were common, much to my dismay. One day, there was a spicy scallop roll. This one that made me stop in my tracks. Some people love scallop sushi, but that population is very small, and preparing a seafood as niche as scallops at the Harris sushi bar was cause for concern. Most sushi restaurants don’t even serve spicy scallop mixes. “No one has ever wanted to order this,” I told a friend of mine as I attempted to chew through the rubbery bits of scallop in the roll.
The hibiscus cured salmon and cucumber rolls were good, and seemed very popular with other students. The shitake mushroom roll was another delicious vegetarian option. The best one I tried, to my surprise, was the teriyaki tofu roll with cucumbers, carrot sticks, chives, and sesame seeds. The tofu was well seasoned, and the cucumbers and carrots gave the roll a great look, in addition to a robust crunch. “They’re like air, they’re so light,” Mark McPhillips ‘20, an occasional vegetarian, enthusiastically said of the ubiquitous sweet potato roll, “I could easily eat 16 pieces. The chives are a good touch, too.”
Overall, I think the sushi experiment at Harris has been executed with valiant effort. And while I give the dining hall an A+ for effort, I think I would have to give it a B-/C+ for quality. It’s definitely not the best, but I have had worse sushi. “I mean, it’s not great. I think in terms of investing their money they could be doing something better. After the first piece I was like ‘I’m good’,” Olivia Parnell ‘18 eloquently put it.
Experiencing sushi at Harris is definitely something everyone should do at least once. For most people though– including me– once should be enough. Overall, sushi at Harris is about what you’d expect. It’s ambitious and creative, but that doesn’t necessarily make it good. Curious about what the youngest students at Conn thought of the endeavor, I asked a first-year friend of mine for her opinion. “I would rather them get rid of the sushi and replace it with a smoothie bar. I’d rather have a good smoothie than mediocre sushi any day,” said Sydney Lamb ’21.
