Leave it up to the chef

Sushi chefs make visual art as much as they assemble flavors. The presentation often is deliberately dramatic, with colorful mini-sculptures arranged in geometrical designs against a minimalist background of a white plate or unadorned wooden plank. Plus, the often-raw, always-fresh ingredients are inherently beautiful, even sexy. Just the sight of carefully sliced pieces of reddish-pink tuna flesh on a dish is enough make a sashimi fan’s toes curl.

One look at the images on the Instagram account for Jimmy Lee’s Aonami Sustainable Sushi restaurant, and it’s obvious he is an especially fine food artist.

“You eat with your eyes first, right?” asked the chef/owner with a sly smile during a recent visit to the downtown sushi bar.

“Yes” is the answer, and nearly every one of the luscious photos would cause one to salivate. There’s the delicate tuna rose, with light, pink tombo tuna sashimi arranged as rose petals around a green and dark-red pickle blend. And the abalone sashimi, fanned out on a bed of greens and pickled red cabbage inside half of its shimmery silver-blue shell.

But maybe the sexiest of all on the Instagram feed (@aonamichico) is the brightly colored sushi roll with flowers on top and an inviting sliver of meaty tuna dangling from one end. None of these dishes is named, but that last one bears the caption, “Here hon, I got you some flowers.” And on a recent visit to his downtown restaurant, it’s the dish Lee agreed to re-create for this Valentine’s-themed feature.

When asked what he calls that particular roll, Lee shrugged and said, “It doesn’t have a name.” It’s an example of the more elaborate chef’s-special dishes one may eat by ordering omakase—which translates to “I’ll leave it up to you.” Freed from the constraints of the regular menu, sushi chefs choose their favorite, freshest ingredients to create something and show off their skills of multisensory allurement.

In the spirit of using what’s on hand at the given time, as well as exercising artistic license, the roll wasn’t an exact replica of his Instagram creation. This was a new work of art built with rice, yellowfin tuna, mango, jalapeños, pickled onion, avocado, jalapeño syrup, sprouts, edible flowers and a mandarin kosho sauce. The vibrant colors were layered—not blended—with yellow, red, light green, dark green, pink, purple, orange and white each standing out. It was a work of art (Instagram-worthy for sure), but of course nothing is ever actually too pretty to eat. And as distinct as the different parts were visually, so too were the flavors, which awoke each of the tongue’s sweet, salty, spicy, bitter and savory taste receptors.

The most subtly distinct ingredient was the house-made kosho sauce—with local mandarin oranges blended together with Szechuan peppercorns, chili and sea salt. It passed quickly across the tongue with the slightest marmalade/orange zest spike at the back of each bite that made this masterpiece a a pleasure to experience.