The Hotly Contested Origin Of The California Roll

Food is a unifier, and famous dishes from pizza to tacos have now become global mainstays. Sushi is certainly one of the most popular Japanese dishes worldwide, but it took a bit of convincing. You might say the California roll helped sushi transition into the mainstream. As its name implies, the California roll was not invented in Japan.

The origin of the California roll is hotly contested, with various chefs vying for the coveted title of inventor. However, all origin stories share a common theme of appealing to American tastes. Sushi restaurants may have existed in the states before the invention of California rolls, but the idea of eating raw fish wrapped in seaweed was off-putting to many North Americans. Enter the California roll, replacing raw fish with cooked crab meat, avocado, and cucumber wrapped in a thick layer of rice that hides the seaweed sticking to its interior.

Some accounts trace the origin of California rolls to different L.A. sushi chefs during the 1960s. The first origin story claims that chef Ichiro Mashita (along with his assistant Teruo Imaizumi) invented the roll at a restaurant called Tokyo Kaikan due to the unpredictable availability of sushi grade tuna at the time. So, he replaced the tender soft meat with avocado. Considering California's bounty of fresh fish markets, this story doesn't hold up. Another origin story crowns Tokyo-transplant and chef Ken Seusa at Hollywood's Kin Jo restaurant the inventor. He was known for his creative culinary fusion of American ingredients like dairy and mayonnaise into sushi rolls.

Seusa was the assumed inventor of California rolls because he had already made a name for himself as a culinary innovator. But, food historians and news outlets dispute this claim and now conclude that the California roll didn't originate in L.A. or even California! A more widely agreed-upon origin occurred farther up the coast in Vancouver, British Columbia during the 1970s. Chef, restaurant owner, and officially recognized cultural ambassador for Japanese cuisine, Hidekazu Tojo invented what we now call the California roll under a different name entirely.

According to Tojo, his attempt to attract Canadian diners to sushi was to make the sushi roll inside-out. By swapping the order of wrapping ingredients to place rice on the outside and seaweed on the inside, Tojo was still staying true to the traditional list of sushi ingredients and sneakily adapting Canadians' palates to the oceanic taste of seaweed. Furthermore, since sushi is all about using fresh local ingredients, he swapped raw tuna for locally caught, boiled Dungeness crab. His original recipe for inside-out rolls, or "tojo-rolls" as they're called at his restaurant, was to fill the rice and seaweed with crab meat, egg, avocado, and spinach, finishing the rice with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

Since the 1970s, California rolls have expanded to include cucumber, imitation crab, and tobiko dustings but they remain sushi lovers' go-to sushi roll. They've also inspired other American inventions like Philadelphia rolls with cream cheese and salmon and New York rolls with shrimp.