How to eat sushi, fish side down.

The menu

Sushi words, explained.

Step by step

How to eat a piece of nigiri.

1. Pour a little soy sauceJust a small pool in your dish. You can always add more; a flooded dish soaks the rice.
2. Pick it upWith your fingers or chopsticks — both are fine for nigiri in Japan.
3. Turn and dip the fishTilt the piece and touch the fish side to the soy sauce. Rice soaks soy up fast, gets too salty and can fall apart.
4. One bite, fish on your tonguePut the whole piece in your mouth so the fish hits your tongue first. Two bites is fine for a big piece; just don’t put a half-eaten one back on the plate.
5. Reset with ginger or teaA slice of pickled ginger or a sip of green tea clears your palate before the next fish, especially when moving from mild to strong.

What first

What order to eat sushi in.

A common rule is light to rich, so delicate flavours aren’t buried by the big ones. If you are ordering piece by piece, this is a good arc:

• 1. White fish — sea bream (tai) or flounder: clean and subtle.
• 2. Silver-skinned fish — horse mackerel (aji) or mackerel (saba): a little stronger, often cured.
• 3. Salmon and yellowtail — richer, buttery.
• 4. Lean tuna, then fatty tuna — akami first, then chutoro and otoro.
• 5. Soft toppings — sea urchin and salmon roe in gunkan.
• 6. Sweet and sauced — grilled eel with its glaze, then tamago, the sweet layered omelette.
• 7. A roll to finish — the one you can’t stop thinking about, again.

The checklist

Sushi etiquette, from wasabi to chopsticks.

• Wasabi is often already there. Many chefs place a little under the fish. If you want more, dab a touch onto the fish rather than stirring a lump into your soy dish.
• Ginger is a palate cleanser. Eat it between pieces, not piled on top.
• Go easy on the soy. A piece brushed with sauce or topped with salt is seasoned already — eat it as it comes.
• Chopsticks rest on the rest. Never stand them upright in rice or pass food chopstick to chopstick; both echo funeral rites in Japan.
• At a counter, eat it as it lands. Rice is at its best for a few moments. One quick photo, then eat.
• At a conveyor-belt shop, take plates as they pass, never put one back once it’s off the belt, and stack your empties — they are counted at the end. Many also let you order fresh pieces from a screen.

Outside Japan

At a sushi bar in the US, UK or Australia.

Menus abroad lean on rolls — spicy tuna, dragon, rainbow, crunchy rolls topped with sauce. Those are made to be eaten as they come, sauce and all, with chopsticks. Nigiri rules still apply to nigiri. If you want the chef to choose for you, read our omakase guide before you book a counter.

Keep it

A save for every piece.

Twelve pieces blur into one great meal by the train home. PlateDiary has a Dish by dish mode: the camera stays up inside the app and each shot stacks on a deck, so a piece-by-piece meal becomes one save per piece, all filed under that counter and that night. Tap Read and PlateDiary AI can suggest a name for each one (free tries first, then a membership) — or type “otoro, the best one” yourself.

Next time you sit at that counter, its place page shows your menu there and how many times you have had each piece. Rate them on the 1–10 food rating scale and the honest favourites stand out.