How Norway Played A Major Part In The Sushi We Eat Today

Picture it: a cut of plush, orange-pink salmon laid across a base of rice or over a sushi roll. You can taste it now, can't you? It is rich, buttery, and subtle, perhaps the perfect fish for sushi. At the very least, it is one of the most popular fish found in sushi, both in Japan and around the world. This wasn't always the case. In fact, up until the 1990s, serving salmon raw or within sushi was simply not done outside of certain, specific ceremonial contexts. This is quite the contrast to its current ubiquitous presence on the global (and Japanese) sushi scene. So how did this happen? Well, long story short, in the 1980s, Norway had a lot of salmon, and not a lot of buyers. As a result, they began shopping their fresh, fatty Atlantic salmon on the international market. 

Meanwhile, Japan was experiencing a shortage of fish thanks to overfishing and a high demand for quality fish. Naturally, Norway saw this gap in Japan's market and sought to fill it with their surplus salmon. Thus began Project Japan, Norway's push to increase their fish exports abroad. Of course salmon is now a sushi menu staple, so Norway's efforts clearly paid off, but not without struggle and some pretty significant pushback. 

Salmon wasn't exactly a novelty in Japan; there are species of salmon that are native to the country. The fish has been served cooked and salted in Japan for centuries. However, outside of the seasonal, small-scale consumption of king salmon in Japan, the fish was not often used in Japanese sushi or sashimi. More common traditional sushi fish choices include tuna, sea urchin, and halibut. (Yes, there is a difference between tuna and salmon sushi.) For the most part, salmon was seen as unfit for serving raw, as Pacific salmon was particularly prone to parasites. So it was not a viable option for sushi. Salmon was already an integral part of the Japanese diet, though not in sushi form. Instead, it was served, cooked, dried, and salted, so importing Norway's high quality Atlantic salmon would not give it its just due. However, unlike Pacific salmon, the salmon farmed and fished in Norway was free of parasites and was very high quality, making it perfect for use in sushi.

There was one snag: There simply wasn't a market for salmon sushi in Japan. Many sushi chefs and connoisseurs believed that salmon tasted off, and was not a good color. Many sushi chefs also believed that the fish had an unpleasant smell. Besides this, there was the parasite concern (which can be an issue even now, which is why sushi grade salmon exists), so many people avoided the fish. To shift its reputation, the people behind Project Japan changed the name. Instead of using the word sake, which is the Japanese word for salmon, they started calling it sāmon, its katakana name. This put some distance between the salmon then known in Japan, and the new, Norwegian product. Still, this wasn't enough to clear salmon's reputation. That would come in the 1990s.

Norway's Project Japan would have its first real breakthrough in 1992, when they sold 5,000 metric tons of salmon to a Japanese company called Nichirei at a very low price point. Olsen put one condition on the deal, however: The fish could only be used for sushi. Soon after, the fish was featured on the Japanese television series "Iron Chef," and it began to grow in popularity. The team at Project Japan found that consumers were more likely to enjoy raw salmon if they weren't familiar with the seafood industry. Many restaurants were not inclined to include the fish on their menu or recommend it to guests, which once against stumped the growth of Norway's goal of making salmon sushi a popular product.

It wasn't until the popularization of conveyor-belt sushi in the 1990s that salmon sushi really took off. In the 1990s, many restaurants in Japan struggled to stay afloat thanks to a real estate crisis. Due to this crunch, many sushi restaurants cut costs by reducing staff, replacing servers with a conveyor belt system of distributing sushi to guests. Instead of placing orders, guests would take sushi from a moving conveyor belt that snaked its way around the restaurant. This distribution method put a greater distance between chefs and customers, allowing them to pick whatever roll or nigiri looked most appealing. And wouldn't you know it, salmon sushi was a hit! Since its original wave of popularity in the 1990s, it has since become a sushi staple, both in Japan and around the world.