“I think the creative process is connected to a little bit of messiness,” Bun Lai, chef and mastermind behind Miya’s Sushi, said at the beginning of the evening. “What I imagined this event was going to look like is nothing like what it’s likely to turn out to be. It’s going to be pretty interesting.”
The occasion Sunday was the first “food experience” of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (there will be four more throughout the festival’s run) and a fitting start to the thread of the festival’s programming that’s concerned with environmental issues.
Lai has made a name for his restaurant on Howe Street through his intensely creative food, much of it driven by a vision of a sustainable cuisine — a way of eating that relies on making the most of what can be found close to home, and not wasting anything in the process. One of Miya’s menu items, the Future Sushi Especial “for an adventurous palate,” features what Lai describes as “a dozen of the most popular sushi recipes from the year 2150”; one roll on this menu involves insects. Miya’s also offers an invasive species menu, under the idea that one of the best ways to check these species’ rapid growth is to find ways to make them, well, delicious to us. This idea landed Miya’s in Scientific American in 2013. Lai and one of that magazine’s editors took a dive in the Long Island Sound for their lunch in the same year.
But on Sunday, we weren’t at Miya’s on Howe Street or in the Long Island Sound. We were at Lai’s family farm in Woodbridge. And he was about to serve us some food from the future — much of which pulled its ingredients from within a few yards of where we were.
“I’m going to collect a few things to make sushi from,” Lai said to his audience, “right here in this field.” He pointed to the pasture behind him. Guided by Lai, those who came to dinner — some with drinks in hand — moved with him through the pasture collecting dandelion greens, dock, mugwort, and wood sorrel.
Meanwhile, Lai’s cooking crew got to work preparing the first of several courses. Amid musical entertainment, they brought out the first course of shallow-water shrimp and mackerel that had been caught off the shore of Bridgeport. Lai explained that he bought entire lots of the shrimp and paid higher prices to try to support the fishermen catching them.
“What’s the seasoning on the shrimp?” asked a delighted diner.
“Just salt and pepper,” Lai said.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Brian Slattery photo
The fish were served with a side of Japanese knotweed — a highly invasive species — that had been fried and spicily seasoned. This knotty-looking dish did not last long at our table.
After this came sushi made from mugwort.
“This is what sushi used to look like a thousand years ago,” Lai said. “Just a ball. No white rice. Just whole grains.” Mugwort, Lai explained with his particular sense of humor, came to America from Europe. “It came over with slavery, syphilis, and colonialism, so if you taste it, you’ll find it has a bitter finish.”
Wild bamboo with rice noodles and peppercorns came next. “It grows here and we foraged it,” explained one of the waiters. “It’s invasive. Enjoy it!” We did.
The venison nigiri, served with a pesto made from wild greens, “was literally shot in that field over there,” Lai said, pointing again.
As we ate these courses and the sun set, the cooking crew prepared to inundate us with sushi and the fish sauce Lai had made himself to substitute for soy sauce.
And inundated we were. Some of the sushi was from the Miya’s menu: Bone Thugs-N-Broccoli, a crunchy sushi roll made from pressure-cooked salmon bones and broccoli (this reporter had two pieces); a spicy kimchee wild Alaskan coho salmon and avocado roll; and kimchee-seared carp nigiri. Then there was an aggressively spicy catfish roll that my neighbor and I agreed was our favorite of the lot, though it was a tough call, especially as the waiters also brought out Jonah crab for us to dismantle and devour.
Night fell as plates were filled and emptied, filled and emptied, and bottles of chile and lime-infused sake were, well, just emptied. The music started up again, joining with the voices of diners, insects, and frogs to fill the air. It can be hard to think about the news that we’ve made a complete mess of the environment and not be filled with despair. But if Bun Lai is right, and we were eating the food of the future on Sunday night, then maybe there’s still room in that mess for creativity, and a little levity, too.
