The perennial herb
by Simon Handby in At home on 23.05.08
I’ll confess – I’m on the reheated stir-fry again, so I’ve had to borrow a colleague’s grub for the final instalment of my week-long lunch diary. I had to be a bit quick with the photos, too – at least that’s my excuse.
Anyway, the above is sushi from a major chain. It was apparently very nice, but there’s quite a bit of waste: a plastic box, a plastic mini-bottle of soy sauce, and some thing else plastic that almost, but not entirely, fails to look like grass.
We asked around the Japanese people we know to find out what the hell this is meant to be, and were reliably informed that:
It’s a representation of shiso, which is a Japanese plant that tastes of peppermint and is traditionally served with sushi. It’s also known as ‘ao shiso’ which means ‘blue shiso’.
We’re also told that it’s very easy to grow shiso in the UK, which begs the question why you never seem to get the real thing in shop-bought sushi.
In fact, we’re so intrigued that we’ve asked Pret why they bother with the plastic, rather than either adding nothing or the real herb. We’ll let you know what they tell us.
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