Hi, my name is Mari. Welcome to “Mari’s Sushi Art NYC”!!
I’m so excited that you are here! This is where I’m sharing my love and passion about beautiful “Kazari sushi” (means “Decorative Sushi” in Japanese) that I discover about 2 years ago.
Have you ever tried Sushi before and did you like them?
Have you made them before? Or have you been wanting to make them or interested in learning how to make them?
If so, I think you’ll enjoy my blog!
I’m a mom of 2 kids who live in NY city and loves cooking & Sushi Making. I also love walking around this amazing city to explore & find all the new things.
Little bit about my history…
Growing up in Japan, Sushi making was a pretty regular thing. We always cook rice for pretty much every meal, even for breakfast, and lots of families make sushi at home. There are also many reasonable, but good sushi restaurant, including those big “Sushi Boat” restaurants.
I always love cooking since I was a kid, helping my mom cook or trying something new by myself.
When I became a mom, I got more consicous about food choices, as I wanted my kids to grow up in a healthy eating habit. Thankfully, my kids weren’t picky eaters but never been big eaters. So when they started to go to school, I started to make a cute bento box with all sorts of decoration with their favorite characters, so they can have fun eating.
As they grow older, they didn’t want to have pokemon characters or princessy bento box anymore… but the Japanese lunch box that I made were popular among their friends.
The most popular thing among all has always been “Sushi”. My kids told me that some kids were even willing to trade a whole pack of Doritos with one small piece of sushi!! That was shocking to my kids to say the least :-).
I used to get many compliments from my kid’s friends or their friends’ moms and even got requests from PTA to make “Sushi” for school event, and Sushi has always been super popular. Every time I bring them (they weren’t anything fancy, just regular sushi…), they disappeared so quickly! There were kids lining up in front me waiting for me to open the tapper wear. It was pretty impressive how popular sushi was, especially among kids, and they all eat veggies if you wrap them in sushi!
then I discover “Kazari Sushi Art”….
In one day of 2017, my Japanese friend told me that she was going to hold a class of “Kazari Maki sushi”. “Kazari Maki Sushi” means “Decorative Sushi Roll” in Japanese. I have seen some amazing pictures of Kazari maki sushi online and instragram before, so I signed up the class. It was in December, the theme was winter theme and we made snowman and Santa clause sushi.
The process was pretty different than making a regular sushi roll. We had to measure everything and needed to follow the each steps in order. While I was making them, I wasn’t sure how it would turn up, but I’ll never forget the moment when we cut our Santa clause sushi and his face perfect showed up! It was like magic! It looked like a regular roll of sushi from outside, but amazing thing comes out when we cut them! Everyone in the class was saying “Wow! It really does look like Santa class face!” and I was excited with what I just made.
I took them back to the house and my kids seemed pretty impressed. The next day, I put the Santa clause sushi in their lunch box. Later, my kids told me that it was pretty popular at school and everyone wanted to see it.
Since then, I got totally hooked with Kazari Sushi. I started to search online and bought books to make different patterns at home. I loved the “wow factor” of Kazari Maki Sushi. “Wow” to myself when I cut them and “wow” to my families and friends when I show it to them. More I tried them, I got better at making them. But because I was making Sushi so often, my family got tired of eating them. I started to give out to my friends and got many compliments.
Encouraged by my friends and families reaction, I started to post pics of my sushi on Instagram. I wasn’t sure if anyone even cares, but to my surprise, I got a few likes from some professional sushi chefs who are making amazing sushi! I couldn’t believe it and was so excited. Soon it becomes my passion more than an occasional hobby.
So this is my story how I met Sushi Art. I’m not a professionally trained sushi chef, and know my sushi is miles away from the beautiful sushi that professional chef makes.But I love making them and trying out the new patterns and want to share them with the world. So maybe, someone might get inspired by my experiment and they start to make their own sushi at home.
I think Sushi is a wonderful, beautiful & healthy food that many people will enjoy. You can wrap many different things in rice, and voila! You can trick those picky eaters to eat vegetables. Or you can impress your families and friends at dinner or home party.
I hope you enjoy my journey and experiment of making more beautiful sushi!
Thank you so much for reading!