【Reading】れたすまき

【English Name】Lettuce sushi roll / Lettuce maki

Lettuce-maki is a creative sushi that combines boiled shrimp, lettuce, and mayonnaise on a base of vinegared rice and nori. Its birth is attributed to Shoji Muraoka, who opened the sushi restaurant Ippei in Miyazaki City in 1966. The trigger for its creation was the composer Masaaki Hirao, a friend of his. Seeing Hirao, who disliked vegetables, suffering health problems, Muraoka came to ponder whether he could get him to consume vegetables in the form of sushi.

Even after the direction of the idea was settled, much trial and error was needed before he found ingredients that paired well with lettuce. While testing combinations of various foods, shrimp and mayonnaise won high support from those who ate it, and thus the present form was completed. In the sushi industry of the time, incorporating raw vegetables and mayonnaise as fillings was not common, but the reputation spread mainly among the younger generation, and its renown gradually rose.

This popularity spread to other sushi restaurants within Miyazaki City as well, and from around the end of the Showa 40s (the late 1970s), under the name salad-maki, it became widely established at supermarkets and takeout sushi chains nationwide. Among those sold nationally, some use imitation crab or tuna as fillings, but the original form that originated in Miyazaki uses shrimp.

At Ippei, mayonnaise is made by hand every morning, and a distinctive feature is that a refreshing sourness is brought out by adding lemon juice and zest to rice vinegar. Furthermore, a unique device of gathering the fillings to one edge when rolling, so that the flavor of the fillings can be felt fully in the mouth from the very first bite, has also been handed down. Even now, more than half a century later, it continues to be widely loved as a local sushi representative of Miyazaki.