"certify" news and stories

The Japanese government wants to set up a certifying board to regulate sushi served in restaurants abroad. Japan's Agriculture Ministry has convened a panel of food experts who will establish certification standards for Japanese restaurants outside the country. The standards should be decided upon sometime in the next month or so. They will focus on all foods that are part of the Japanese cuisine such as sushi preparation and styles, noodles, teriyaki, etc.

The thought behind this is that by certifying restaurants as authentic it will raise the level of the quality of food prepared, and educate people as to what the food should be like when prepared properly. There are around 10,000+ "authentic" Japanese restaurants in the US, double what there were a little over a decade ago. This has led to a shortage of classically trained chefs, especially sushi chefs.

Becoming a sushi chef is a big deal in Japan. It takes many years of apprenticeship. First a few years learning how to make rice before you are even allowed to touch it, then learning about fish, types, slicing, arrangement, tastes, preparation, etc. Chefs of this quality are lacking in many Japanese and sushi restaurants abroad, leading to poor quality and "inauthentic" sushi.

In The US I have seen sushi chefs who have only a few weeks experience and don't know anything besides how to throw together a few messy maki rolls. They don't know the proper ways to slice fish to present it best and have it melt tenderly in your mouth. Instead you end up eating slabs of fish filled with tough connective tissue because it was cut the wrong way.

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