【Reading】おてしょ

【English Name】Otesho (small dipping dish)

Otesho is a term for the small plate used at sushi restaurants and in Japanese dining settings. The etymology is "ote-shio" (honorable hand salt), originally meaning a small vessel for placing each person's own salt at the dining table.

In traditional Japanese dining etiquette, there was a custom of setting at the front of the meal tray a small plate holding seasonings such as salt or miso, and this vessel was called a "teshio-zara" (salt plate). Eventually, not limited to salt alone, small plates in general for holding soy sauce or condiments came to be called otesho.

At sushi restaurants, it is mainly used as a small plate into which soy sauce is poured to dip the sushi. At the counter, a chef may say "otesho o dozo" (please use the otesho), making it one term worth remembering in the world of sushi.

It also survives in the dialect of the Harima region (southwestern Hyogo Prefecture) in the forms "otesho" and "oteshi," and is still used today as an everyday word meaning a small plate. The common modern term is "shoyu-zara" (soy sauce plate), but this traditional designation is sometimes used at long-established sushi restaurants and ryotei.