Everybody’s heard of the California roll. It shows up in almost any American venue that serves sushi, and Flo’s Bellevue Japanese Restaurant is no exception. Not only is this roll delicious, but the story of the California roll represents the birth of fusion-style sushi, or “American-style” sushi as it is largely known abroad.
This story goes back to Los Angeles in the 1970’s. Sushi was still very strange to the United States, and sushi chefs were having a difficult time selling their craft to the public. They needed to get creative, so they broke the mold and experimented with some native ingredients. They realized that combining imitation crab with avocado served well to simulate the experience of consuming raw fish. Americans finally took the plunge into the world of sushi, and the roll that made it all happen was immortalized with the name of the state where it first made its premiere.