The Japanese Who Made 'Fake' Sushi Part 1: The California Roll, Los Angeles 1970

No sushi is more scorned than the California Roll.

Avocado, imitation crab, inside-out roll. The nori hidden inside, the outside coated with sesame seeds or tobiko. Any true sushi lover would frown at it. A knockoff created by Americans who didn't understand Japanese food. That's the widely shared perception.

But this dish was invented by Japanese people.

In the 1960s and 70s, there was a sushi chef named Ichiro Kato (some say Ichiro Mashita) working at Tokyo Kaikan in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Around the same time, a chef named Hidekazu Tojo in Vancouver was independently creating almost the same thing. Two Japanese men, in different cities across the Pacific, arrived at similar inventions. This was no coincidence.

They faced the same problem.

In North America at the time, it was difficult to reliably source fresh tuna suitable for sushi. Fatty tuna was especially unavailable. And most Americans were put off by the black appearance and distinctive texture of nori. They had no custom of eating raw fish.

Normally, you'd give up. But they were craftsmen.

Kato noticed the avocado. It was available year-round in California. And when eaten with soy sauce, it had a flavor similar to fatty tuna. This wasn't an accidental discovery. It was a similarity that only someone who knew toro intimately—its texture, how the fat spreads, how it melts on the tongue—could recognize. Years of making toro in Japan allowed him to find the taste of home in a foreign fruit.

The inside-out roll, with nori on the inside, wasn't a compromise but a solution. It preserved the taste and texture of nori while reducing visual resistance. It was an innovation to deliver the essence of sushi to customers.

Hidekazu Tojo later said: "The philosophy of traditional sushi is to use fresh local fish." So he used Dungeness crab caught in Vancouver. Rather than insisting on fish airfreighted from Japan, he tried to realize the spirit of sushi with local ingredients.

Was this an attempt to "make something fake"? I don't think so. They asked themselves: "How can we deliver the essence of sushi to these people, in this land?" That's the same question every craftsman in every era has faced.

The California Roll isn't a knockoff created by Americans misunderstanding Japanese food. It's the result of Japanese craftsmen adapting their skills and taste to a new environment after crossing the ocean. Their hands held decades of experience cultivated in Japan. The eye that could see toro in an avocado was born only from that experience.

So was this an isolated exception that happened only in California?

Actually, the same story has been repeated around the world. Next time, we'll follow another culinary revolution started by Japanese immigrants in Peru, South America.