Vegan Sushi Making 13/02/20

Last week I went to a vegan sushi making class at Great Dover Street Cafe, one of the student accommodations of my university. It transpired to be less of a class and more a group of predominantly white western people attempting to make sushi rolls with very little guidance coupled with strong appetites, so that the appearance of the finished product ended up mattering probably less than it should have and approach definitely erred on unconventional. Getting there required two tube changes and a walk down a street I don’t recognise until I passed a student bar I spent about 15 minutes in a few weeks before. Needless to say, not unlike the majority of student bars I’ve been to, it was a bitterly disappointing experience. 

I found myself feeling a bit dubious as I walked into the residence and asked at the reception where the cafe was where the class was supposed to be taking place. Luckily I heard someone call my name not long after I’ve enquired at the desk, a friend from my course who happens to live there. She lead me down to where I needed to be. Directions were never my strong suit, neither giving nor receiving. As I’ve found from my admittedly limited experience of society events, the first people you meet when you walk into a room are never the people you end up potentially chatting to for the rest of the night. Thankfully that rule also applied on this occasion. Being one of the only people there when I arrived, I made polite conversation with a girl who’s eye makeup ended up being probably the most interesting thing about her (although she did have some pretty cool yellow dinosaur earrings). As more people filed in, the sense of malnutrition and overt outrage at animal maltreatment and the food production industry in general that one can always associate with vegans steadily increased. I spent the first 20 minutes or so of the event trying to drift between various people until I found someone on my same sort of wavelength of conversation. I’m getting better but honestly, this socialising business is really quite challenging sometimes. 

The thing about vegan society I’ve noticed (and maybe just vegans in general, or maybe just societies in general) is that there are definitely levels of seriousness about the whole thing. This basically means that the whole experience can in some ways seem a bit intimidating and a bit cult-ish - but in an environmental and sustainable sort of way. Without doubt, every time I meet vegans the question always inevitably arises of ‘how long have you been vegan?’ almost like a sort of test. The last convert to the cause loses. I’ve been lucky the last couple of times and have managed to meet at least one person who not only wanted to talk about something other than veganism (we do have other components to our personality after all) but even better enjoyed taking the piss out of militant veganism (this same principle also applies to radical feminism in my opinion. Often, you can kill two birds with one stone with this sort of crowd). I would argue that there’s a big difference between talking about your favourite vegan haunts and Instagram accounts, and condemning the entire population of omnivores. Don’t even get them started on vegetarians whom they label as hypocritical before you can say ‘plant based milk alternative’.  

For the sushi making itself, the president of vegan society, a white 20 something university student from London, gave us all a quick tutorial on how to layer our nori sheets and roll them. To be fair to her, she was perfectly lovely and I think its great that we’re given the opportunity to explore other cultures through food and tradition. I’m just cynical. That being said, when the event was advertised as a ‘sushi making class’, I foolishly thought that there would maybe be some level of experience involved past techniques self-confessedly learnt from a youtube tutorial. But hey, it was really lovely of her to organise it as an event and, speaking as a white middle class western cis-woman, who am I to talk about cultural appropriation whilst we were throwing the age old art of sushi making out of the window through westernisation? 

Not to endorse stereo-typification, but the two Asian girls next to me actually turned out to be incredible at making sushi and made a roll with rice both on the inside and outside and beautifully adorned with artistically arranged pieces of cucumber and carrot. Mine in comparison looked how I think most people feel after the Christmas holidays, overstuffed and oddly shaped, even smooshed in parts. However, when I looked the other way, the girl on my other side was making sushi rolls using just nori sheets and vegetables, without the rice and just dipping the whole thing in soy sauce without cutting it into smaller sections, so that re-instilled a little faith in my own culinary skills (and quite frankly, standards).

As the evening came to an end, I was stood chatting to the aforementioned sushi assassin as well as another person whom I’d met there, when a guy came up to me, leant into our conversation and standing too uncomfortably close said, in a voice that can only be described as little more than a whisper, ‘do you wanna know a secret’?’. Honestly my first thought was ‘oh for fuck’s sake here we go’ but I smiled and said ‘yes’ politely, to which he responded ‘I’m not from here’. The conversation that then ensued was very brief (mostly because I cut it short by claiming that I had to get going) but he was the sort of person who is simultaneously a terrible conversationalist with very little to say and at the same time didn’t seem to mind persisting in standing too close while I desperately tried to make conversation, if only to ease the awkwardness. Honestly I feel like the only way I can even make an attempt at encapsulating fully the uncomfortableness and laboriousness of this situation is to outline the conversation as it happened, please see below: 

Him (I actually learnt his name was Michael): ‘Do you wanna know a secret?’

Me: *smiling nervously* ‘yes’

Him: ‘I’m not from here’

Me: ‘Where are you from?’

Him: ’Sheffield’

Me: ‘Oh cool, I love Sheffield. Why are you here?’

Him: *gesturing towards the first girl I spoke to who at this point is sat on the opposite side of the room and just seems to be observing our conversation* ‘She brought me. I’m her photographer’

Me: ‘Oh cool, so what do you do in Sheffield do you work, or?’

Him: ‘I’m at the university’

Me: ‘So do you study Photography or?’

Him: ‘No, economics’

Me: ‘Oh damn that sounds difficult’

I can only hope, sadistically, that reading that was even half as painful as being part of the conversation was. Needless to say, I slipped away sharpish and went home, reminiscing on the night as a good experience with some tasty (although not altogether aesthetically pleasing) sushi, and with a new idea for a written piece. I’d say I got enough out of it to make that slightly traumatic social experience worth it.