Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl Page A

had, and struggled to say something that would reassure him. I knew that he was worried that when the bill came I would not be able to pay it, that he was embarrassed to tell me that when he said “expensive” he meant that my lunch was likely to cost more than a hundred dollars. What could I say to him? I tried this: “I have spent time in Japan.”
    This did not seem to reassure him. I tried again. I bowed and said, “ Omakase, I am in your hands.”
    A broad smile moved across his face. I had found the code. He spread the bamboo leaf in front of me and, leaning forward, said softly, “Sashimi first?”
    â€œOf course,” I said, and he began grating the wasabi. Patting it into a pale green pyramid, he placed it precisely on the leaf, added pickled ginger, and retreated to the center of the counter to survey his fish.
    From a drawer beneath the counter he extracted a wrapped rectangle and began peeling off the plastic to reveal a pale pink slab of tuna belly. As his knife moved unerringly through the flesh, the waitress glided up to me. “Notice,” she said, “that Mr. Uezu does not cut toro as other chefs do. He cuts only with the grain of the fish, never across it.” I scrutinized the squares of fish the chef placed on the leaf. They were the pale pink of pencil erasers, with no telltale traces of white sinew snaking through them. When I put the first slice on my tongue it was light, with the texture of whipped cream. It was in my mouth—and then it had simply vanished, faded away leaving nothing but the sweet richness of the fish behind. “Oooh,” I found myself moaning, and the waitress allowed herself a tight little smile.
    The chic woman said something to the sushi chef, and he grinned and said “Hai,” as he bent to take something from the glass case before him. It was a small silvery fish, only a few inches long, that I had never seen before. He filleted it quickly, pulled the shining skin back in one quick zipping motion, and chopped the fish into little slivers that he scooped into two hollowed-out lemons. He placed one lemon before her, along with a little dish of chopped ginger and scallions, and then he came to my end of the bar and did the same.
    â€œSayori,” he said.
    â€œNo wasabi,” said a voice in my ear. The waitress had glided up so silently that I had not heard her. She pointed to the soy sauce. “Sayori is very delicate and Mr. Uezu does not want you to eat wasabi with this fish.”
    I picked up a cool sliver, dipped it into the ginger mixture, and placed it in my mouth. It was smooth and slick against my tongue, with a clear, transparent flavor and the taut crispness of a tart green apple.
    â€œOh,” I murmured in surprise, and again the waitress gave a tight little smile.
    â€œYou have not had this before,” she said. “Mr. Uezu has secret ways of obtaining fish that no one else can get.” I had a fleeting vision of the small, sweet-faced man rampaging through the Fulton Fish Market with a snub-nosed pistol.
    â€œNo,” I agreed, “I have not had this before.” As I said it a look of horror, quickly replaced by a less potent look of mere disapproval, flashed across her face. Following her glance I saw the man in Birkenstocks plunk his sushi rice-side-down into the soy sauce, and as he put it in his mouth we could both see that the rice had turned a deep brown. The waitress made a quick, sharp intake of breath and turned away.
    Mr. Uezu was in front of the fashion plate now, prying a tiny abalone out of its thick shell and slicing it so thinly you could practically see light through the slices. He was creating a little still life, his knife slashing through the long neck of a geoduck clam until he had created little stars snuggling next to the abalone. Now he laid a bright red Japanese Aogi clam beside it, and next to that two tiny octopuses the size of marbles. Finally an