Uoriki assists in the development of a superior retail sushi program.

2. get rolling with
Wegmans
More and more people are eating Vegetable Roll—(Shown above)
With avocado, cucumber, carrots, and your
sushi these days, and it’s no choice of our Wegmans exclusive short-
grain white rice or whole-grain brown rice.
surprise. It’s fresh, delicious,
Green Vegetable Roll— A very
and comes with lots of options American version of sushi, with slivers
(not just raw fish). If you’ve ever of asparagus, spinach, and cucumber with
creamy garlic mayo.
been curious to try, or just want
Avocado Summer Spring Roll—
to learn more about your favorite Green leaf lettuce, cucumber, avocado,
and shredded red cabbage, in a
lunch, here’s a little sushi 101. transparent spring roll wrapper.
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3. California Roll—(Shown above) Wasabi Tuna Roll—(Shown above)
Featuring our Wegmans exclusive Ahi tuna with cucumber, scallion, and
crabstick (Kanakami), avocado, cucumber, wasabi mayonnaise rolled in nori with
and our exclusive short-grain white rice. rice and black sesame seeds.
Spicy Lump Crab Roll—One of our Tuna Nigiri—Our sashimi-grade tuna
signature items, with cooked crab, spicy has a rich yet delicate flavor.
sauce, cucumber, and scallions.
Spicy Tuna Roll—Made with our
Shrimp Tempura Roll— specialty tuna, spicy sauce, scallions,
Tempura-fried shrimp, spicy sauce, and cucumbers, masago (roe), and rice, in a
shredded lettuce with tempura krispies nori seaweed wrap.
and savory-sweet teriyaki sauce.
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4. Wasabi wä-sä-be
This spicy-hot horseradish
mix is served as a condiment
with sushi.
Taste the
Wegmans Difference
The first ingredient in our
Nigiri ni-ger-e wasabi is natural Japanese
Small pillows of sushi wasabi—a major investment
rice topped with raw on our part. Others use
or cooked seafood. green food color and
horseradish powder.
Here are some basic sushi terms
to get you started, whether
you’re trying our made-to-order
rolls or something fresh from our
display case.
-
sü-she “seasoned rice” Taste the
Wegmans Difference
and see why our sushi is so special.
Taste the
Wegmans Difference
Shrimp
From a sustainable Canadian
fishery, these Northern Pink
Kanikama kän-e-kä-mä Shrimp are light and fantastically
Also known as crabstick, this popular sweet. You won’t find these on
sushi ingredient is imitation crabmeat any other sushi bar.
made from whitefish.
Taste the
Taste the Wegmans Difference
Wegmans Difference
Spicy Sauce
Our recipe is a Wegmans Another exclusive for us, this blend
exclusive: All natural, sustainable of sriracha sauce, hot sesame oil,
seafood, with no preservatives, chili oil, and mayo takes any sushi
MSG, or gluten. item to another level.
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5. Nori no-re
This traditional Japanese
wrap is made using specially
processed dried seaweed.
Taste the
Wegmans Difference
Veggie and Fruit Wraps
If you want to try something different from
the traditional nori seaweed wrap, these
are great—especially for the beginner sushi
eater. We have flavors like BBQ, carrot-
ginger, mango-chipotle, and tomato-basil.
Taste the Sashimi sä-she-me
Just the fish, cooked or uncooked.
Wegmans Difference
Rice Taste the
We’re the only retailer in the US Wegmans Difference
using this traditional Tamaki Gold Superfrozen bigeye tuna
short-grain rice for sushi. Freshly Our richly flavored all-natural
milled for us in California each tuna is higher in fat than
month, it’s simply the best. standard yellowfin. It’s quickly
frozen to -67°F right on the boat,
Taste the
so you get what our supplier calls
Wegmans Difference
“fresher than fresh” taste.
Rice Vinegar
We worked with our supplier to Taste the
create our own vinegar blend—it Wegmans Difference
delivers the perfect balance of Salmon
sweet, salty, and sour. Our sushi salmon comes from the
same British Columbia supplier
who provides our Seafood
Department’s superb farm-raised
salmon. Specially processed to
our standards, right near the
farm, then shipped straight to us.
Pickled ginger
This thinly shaved fresh
ginger root is a sparkling
palate cleanser.
Taste the
Wegmans Difference
We only use smaller
ginger root for its superior
tenderness. Larger ginger can
be woody and tough.
Ours is always tender
and flavorful.
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6. Wegmans sushi:
Raising the bar By Janet Fletcher
Photography
by Yasu Nakaoka
America’s appetite for sushi is soaring, and who would have
thought it? A generation ago, a sushi dinner meant an exotic
night out in a restaurant where you probably didn’t quite know
the ropes. Today, many youngsters think of sushi as no more
foreign than a slice of pizza—an attitude shift reflected in the
spiking sushi sales at Wegmans.
Assortment of
Wegmans Sushi “Sushi has gone from trendy to mainstream, but most retailers
weren’t doing anything special with it,” says John Emerson,
executive chef in charge of sushi for all Wegmans stores. “We
saw this as a tremendous opportunity to offer something no
other food market had.”
Wegmans opened its first in-store sushi bar in 1996 and has
steadily introduced sushi to more stores and hired more
experts. But two years ago, with customer interest so strong,
management decided it was time to dive deep: to invest in the
education, equipment and ingredients necessary to produce
“sushi house-quality” fare. Wegmans knew its sushi was good,
but could it be great?
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7. First stop: Japan. With the help of Uoriki, a company
that operates more than 40 retail seafood markets in Tokyo,
Wegmans sent Emerson and three sushi chefs to Japan for an
immersion in the sushi craft.
Sounds like fun, but the schedule was grueling. On several days,
the agenda started at 4 a.m. with a visit to the city’s famed Tsukiji
Fish Market, the largest in the world. At this bustling wholesale
emporium, the Uoriki chefs showed the Wegmans team how they
select fish from the world’s finest suppliers. The visiting chefs
also learned how to fillet a whole giant tuna in the Japanese
manner, a ritual that typically involves three people and a set of
specialized knives, including one knife more than six feet long.
The American group spent afternoons in Uoriki’s retail stores,
assisting their employees as they prepared sashimi and sushi for
the world’s most discriminating audience. In the evenings, they
headed to restaurants to work side-by-side with top Japanese
chefs before sitting down to dinner themselves.
Once back in the U.S, the real work began. Every
element and ingredient of the Wegmans sushi program was
scrutinized in light of what the team had learned. New sources
for tuna, rice, vinegar, and even wasabi were researched, taste-
tested, and selected.
“We were using a cold-smoked tuna that almost everybody in the
industry used, but we decided that it wasn’t good enough,” says
Emerson. Tuna suppliers had devised the smoking process to
preserve tuna’s watermelon-red color. The smoke leaves no taste
and keeps the flesh from browning, so the tuna appears fresh
even when it isn’t. Wegmans chefs wanted a better alternative.
Ironically, Emerson and his team determined that the best,
freshest tuna is frozen at sea. Because tuna boats can spend
many days on the water, “fresh” tuna can be three weeks old
by the time it reaches stores, Emerson learned. In contrast,
boats equipped with so-called superfreezers can haul the tuna
in live, process them humanely, and chill them to -76˚F—the
point at which all cell activity stops—within 20 hours. Michael
McNicholas, operations and quality control manager for Uoriki,
says “You put a perfect tuna in, you get a perfect tuna out.”
At great expense, Uoriki installed superfreezers in Wegmans
stores to keep the tuna at peak condition. When thawed,
“it is as if they just came out of the water,” says Emerson.
Although yellowfin tuna is the norm for retail sushi in the U.S.,
Wegmans insisted on the higher-fat bigeye, the species preferred
Wegmans Chef John Emerson for sushi in Japan.
(top photo, in red jacket) led his
team on 4 a.m. learning trips Uroiki also worked with Wegmans to improve its kanikama
to Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, (crabstick), a sushi-bar favorite that often includes preservatives
followed by daily work with the and MSG. After many tweaks, Chef Emerson got the more
city’s best sushi chefs. natural kanikama he wanted, prepared from sustainable seafood
without gluten or MSG.
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8. Avocado
Summer
Spring Roll
Even the wasabi got an upgrade. At many retail sushi counters,
the “wasabi” is actually Western horseradish with chili oil and
food coloring. Wegmans wanted the real stuff: authentic, all-
natural Japanese wasabi, to complement the other top-shelf
ingredients. “You can feel the texture of the real wasabi on your
tongue,” says McNicholas. “It has a purer flavor, without
a stinging burn.” The heightened quality focus means greater
expense, but it’s worth the investment. To be able to offer this
authentic wasabi, even the packaging had to change: serving it
in airtight packets helps retain its vibrant green color.
Bringing it home: Perhaps the most surprising lesson the Wegmans team learned
Wegmans’ John in Japan concerned rice and the importance of freshness. Who
Emerson helps knew that superior sushi requires rice that has been freshly
prep seafood milled? Discriminating Japanese chefs consider the rice too old if
at one of our it was milled more than six weeks before.
popular in-store
Sushi Fests. After considerable legwork and help from Uoriki, Wegmans found
a California farm growing the short-grain rice used for sushi in
Japan. In fact, the Japanese import this rice and have honored it
with awards—the only American rice with that distinction. Even
better, the farm operates its own mill and was willing to process
rice to order for Wegmans.
“It was an enormous investment in quality on our part,” says
Emerson of this costly rice. “But I don’t know any other operation
that’s getting fresh-milled rice, except Morimoto restaurant in
Philadelphia.”
For Emerson and his sushi team, the learning adventure hasn’t
ended. To show off their newfound skills, they hatched the
idea of a Sushi Festival, featuring whole fish flown in from
Tsukiji Market and whole tuna that they dispatch with great
showmanship in front of shoppers. These festivals,
which will continue, have drawn enthusiastic crowds, including
many expatriates thrilled to find fish they haven’t seen since
leaving Japan.
For Wegmans chefs, implementing the finest sushi has been a
richly rewarding challenge. Says Chef Emerson, “I never would
have imagined I could do this in a retail store.”
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