SUSHI CHEF AS ARTIST

I went out to sushi the other day, and I was looking at the food in front me, and I realized that the largest part of a sushi's chef energy goes towards the presentation of the food, rather than any actual preparation of the sushi to get it into an edible state. A chef has to prepare the food, cook it, turn it into something edible before it can be served. Obviously, with any chef position, there is an element of presentation, making everything appear appetizing after it has been cooked. But with sushi, there are very few dishes, if any, that require that kind of preparation. The way you cut it has some effect on the taste, but at the very core of it, a suhsi chef is an artist, putting together a work of art that encompasses all the food that you're eating. Have you ever ordered a large amount of sushi at one time with a group of people? They always come out with these wonderful, colorful platters with all the fish cut and laid out for you. I would have to imagine that the chef spends more time preparing the layout and presentation of the food than he does the actual preparing the food for consumption, because all that requires is cutting it.

This is not to say other chefs aren't artists either. There is a certain artistry requires to balance the different flavors, the same way an artist would balance colors in a painting. However, it just seems to me that no other chef spends as large a portion of time preparing the aesthetics of the meal as the sushi chef does. There is something about directly manipulating raw materials, and only raw materials, to make what amounts to a work of art that, to me, makes the sushi chef even more of artist than a chef.