Northwest Bookshelf: Shiro Kashiba, Recipes from a Sushi Pioneer

By Brian Colella

SHIRO KASHIBA’S MEMOIR, Shiro: Wit, Wisdom and Recipes from a Sushi Pioneer (Chin Music Press), takes us from the Ginza district of Tokyo to the shores of Puget Sound, where in 1966, the author says, “there wasn’t a sushi bar anywhere.” Shiro changed that with a series of restaurants—culminating with his namesake Belltown eatery—and helped put both raw fish and Seattle on the American culinary map. Though he considered moving elsewhere, the Pacific Northwest’s underwater bounty (salmon, tuna, the oft-overlooked smelt, and the otherworldly geoduck) was too rich to pass up. You could say the same for the book’s final 90 pages: recipes and tips that have made Shiro’s sushi some of the best in the land.