The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I began as a way to preserve fish, and the rice was thrown away.
I was street food, sold from carts, long before I was expensive.
My chefs traditionally train for years before being allowed to touch the fish.
My name actually refers to the vinegared rice, not to the fish at all.
Nigiri, maki, and a smear of wasabi.
Sushi
The rice began as packaging — fermented, then thrown away. It took a thousand years for anyone to think of eating it.
The original was preservation, not cuisine: fish packed in fermenting rice for months, the rice discarded before eating. Vinegar shortened the process, and in the 1820s a Tokyo vendor called Hanaya Yohei skipped the fermentation entirely, pressing fresh fish onto seasoned rice and selling it from a stall. It was street food, eaten with the fingers, in pieces roughly twice today's size. Refrigeration and the tuna boom of the twentieth century turned it into something expensive. Most wasabi served outside Japan is horseradish with dye, because the real root is difficult to grow and loses its heat within minutes.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #27 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #26. Next: mystery #28. Or try #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34.