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Comment by tgb | Hacker News Reader

Can a blinded panel pick out top quality sushi? I hear sommeliers can't do so for wine, often failing to do well even at identifying red versus white. My first cynical guess for why the education is so long is that customers will pay more for it, regardless of whether or not the product itself benefits. Then again, I barely eat sushi.

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> Can a blinded panel pick out top quality sushi?

Since fish can vary from practically tasteless to overpowering, it probably depends on the type of fish. But I've seen people can eat sushi and tell you the exact temperature based on the flavor. Or what part of the ocean the fish came from based on the flavor. Those are pretty objective metrics.

Then there's also the whole "people end up in the hospital if you screw up". If you're a poor and unclean sushi chef, you are going to make people sick eventually.

That sound impressive, unless they didn't actually prove their claim. Did someone have a thermometer to stick in the fish? Did someone have evidence the fish came from that part of the ocean? They are objective ONLY if they were actually measured.

> Or what part of the ocean the fish came from based on the flavor I can tell you what part of the ocean any fish came from too: The watery part. It's true, but not very useful. Other than that kind of statement, how do you know what they say is true?

It reminds me of the Shakespeare quote about the vasty deep:

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

> I hear sommeliers can't do so for wine, often failing to do well even at identifying red versus white.

This is a tremendous misreading of a study of dubious quality.

I have a few friends who have studied to be sommeliers. The training is intense and the exams arduous. There are several hundreds of different flavor profiles that have to be understood and picked out in real wines (and they map with objective chemical profiles). There is character in the wine that comes from specific characteristics of the regions and seasonality. And the tests to be a sommelier require months of study and are based on objective criteria.

Would you be able to tell apart a pizza from a top italian restaurant and a microwaved instant pizza? The differences between top-grade sushi and bad sushi are just as obvious, you really don't need to be an expert.

By the way, in japan there is a highly developed market for fish with many levels of quality, so the expensive restaurants get the best parts of the best fish and the leftovers end up in cheaper places.

I think a better test wouldn't be whether or not there is sushi-so-bad-you-can-tell, it's whether a chef with 2 years of training can make sushi indistinguishable from a chef with 15 years of training. The pizza equivalent is quite different from what you suggest. That's not what I had originally thought of though, so your example is definitely a good point. I'm pretty sure I, at least, would be hard pressed to tell the pizza equivalent of guessing the less experienced chef.

Also, both chefs should get access to the same ingredients to test if the training is the important part.

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