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3 min read
Ryohei Sagara
The First Sanma of Autumn
Why this seasonal fish from Nemuro is an autumn favourite, served as nigiri or grilled whole with salt.
The first box from Nemuro arrived on a Tuesday, packed in ice. Twenty slender fish, blue-black along the back and bright as foil underneath.
It’s a modest fish, but one of the arrivals the kitchen looks forward to most.
A fish that names a season
In Japanese, sanma is written 秋刀魚: autumn, sword, fish. It arrives when the air turns, it’s long and thin like a blade, and for a few weeks it’s on every table in the country, from station stands to the counters of Ginza.
There’s an old rakugo story, Meguro no Sanma, about a lord who eats grilled sanma at a farmhouse and refuses to eat it anywhere else. His cooks steam it and pick out every bone, and he’s disappointed. We take the lord’s side.
What we look for in the box
Sanma doesn’t keep, so we check every fish the morning it lands. Four things decide whether it goes on the menu:
A yellow tip on the jaw. It turns yellow when the fish is fat and fresh.
Clear, round eyes. Cloudy eyes mean a day too long in transit.
A firm belly. It should spring back under a thumb.
A taut, dark back. Dull skin means the oil has started to turn.
Only fish that meets our quality standards is selected for service.
Two ways, one fish
Raw at the counter
At the counter we salt the fillet lightly, rinse it and slice it for nigiri with a little grated ginger and scallion. It’s the richest piece in an autumn omakase, so it comes late, after the white fish.
Grilled whole in the dining room
In the dining room it goes over the binchotan whole: salted twenty minutes ahead, grilled hard until the fat spits and the skin blisters, then served with grated daikon and half a sudachi.
“The fat does the work. My job is to get the skin crisp before the inside goes dry.”
Shun Tanaka, grill chef at Sushi Sagara
A balance of rich and bitter
Grilled sanma is traditionally enjoyed with its distinctive bitter notes. Daikon and citrus bring balance to its richness.
How the season runs
The fish changes a lot in ten weeks, and so does the way we serve it.
Weeks | Fat | How we serve it |
|---|---|---|
Late August | Lean | Grilled only |
September | Rich | Nigiri and grilled |
October | Richest | Nigiri, grilled, donabe rice |
November | Fading | Grilled, then gone |
Catches have fallen hard too. Japan landed more than 300,000 tonnes in 2008; recent seasons have brought in around a tenth of that, so some weeks the box doesn’t come.
Catch it while it’s here
Come in September or October and mention it when you book. We’ll hold a fish for your table, raw or grilled, or both if you can’t decide.
Book a table and tell us you’re here for the sanma.
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