Female sushi chef?

[vloglady]

We went out for sushi tonight. And it dawned on me...

Has anyone ever seen a female sushi chef? We've seen many different cultures represented besides Japanese. But never a lady sushi chef.

[pastrygirl]

A sushi bar near me has a woman who works behind the sushi bar. Does anyone who makes sushi qualify as a sushi chef, or only the head chef?

[Lisa Shock]

I know of one nearby me as well, she's the executive chef at a sushi bar and was in line just ahead of me to audition for Hell's Kitchen a few years back.

[SusieQ]

There is a woman sushi chef at Mashiko's in West Seattle. (Full restaurant name is Mashiko Japanese Restaurant and Fully Sustainable Sushi Bar.) Go to http://sushiwhore.com/home.html for their home page, where you can also read about how Mashiko's is one of the first sushi restaurants in the nation with exclusively all-sustainable seafood. The owner made a commitment to this two years ago and really followed through. Read all about it on his website. He also talks about the myth that women can't be sushi chefs. Something about women making all the sushi 200 years ago.

[Will]

Niki Nakayama of N/Naka in LA is a trained sushi chef, and ran a sushi place before opening her current place (which does modern kaiseki style cuisine; the dinners do include a sushi course, though).

http://www.n-naka.com/about/chef/

[ChrisZ]

A good friend of mine is a female sushi chef, she is Japanese and trained in Osaka. I have asked her advice on a number of topics that have popped up on this forum, including the one about eating raw scallop roe.

[The Monkey House]

I've read that the reason women are not normally sushi chefs is that their hands are too warm and heats the sushi too much. For what it's worth...

[nickrey]

If this is true, why do they always have cold hands and feet? Just asking...

[patrickamory]

There used to be a terrific restaurant in the West Village with a female sushi chef - Taka.

Hakata Tonton occupies that space now.

[pastrygirl]

If this is true, why do they always have cold hands and feet? Just asking...

Seriously. My fingers are usually freezing! If women all had hot hands, we wouldn't be suited to pastry either. There are a lot of things in pastry that you don't want to warm or melt when you touch them, like buttery doughs and chocolate.