Rice dishes ── Sushi
Mehari Zushi
Mehari Zushi — a rice ball wrapped whole in salt-cured mustard greens
A big rice ball wrapped whole in salt-cured mustard greens, carried into the hills and out to sea in southern Wakayama. Accounts of the name vary — eyes opening wide at its size, or at its flavor — and both the filling and the rice change by area.
- Origin: Wakayama
- About 460 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Mehari-zushi is a large rice ball wrapped in salt-pickled takana (mustard greens) leaves, a portable meal long associated with Wakayama's southern coast. The soft rice, sometimes shaped into sushi rice, is enclosed by the tangy, salty leaves, meant to be eaten in generous bites. Fillings vary by household and region — some mix in finely chopped takana stems, others fold in flaked grilled fish — giving this humble packed lunch plenty of local variety.
How it's made
Harvested takana leaves are salted in a barrel around January or February and keep, slowly turning brown, until autumn. The pickled leaves are softened in vinegar before wrapping around a hand-formed ball of rice, either plain white rice or vinegared sushi rice depending on preference. In leaner times, families reportedly stretched the rice with barley. In the Shimosato area of Nachikatsuura, sweet-simmered river whitebait is sometimes mixed into the rice for extra flavor.
Why it took this shape
In the fishing and forestry communities of southern Wakayama, workers needed food they could eat quickly between hauls or in the hills, and mehari-zushi is said to have filled that role. Takana also grows well in the shaded mountain terrain where flat farmland is scarce, which may have made it a natural crop for the region. The name itself has several competing explanations, from "opening the eyes wide to take a big bite" to "eyes widening at how good it looks," and no single account is considered definitive. Its lasting shape reflects a food built above all for eating on the go.
Before you go
- How to read a vertical menuIn shops with strips of handwritten menu items on the wall, the top-right spot is often used for recommendations.
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
Dishes in the same style
- Aburi-zushiNigiri with just its surface flash-seared by torch or hot iron. Unlike Edomae's shigoto curing for keeping, the searing here is done purely for the change in aroma and fat it brings — a relatively recent way of eating sushi.
- Aichi HakozushiVinegared rice is packed into a wooden frame, topped with shrimp, eel, shiitake, and egg arranged diagonally, and pressed. Placing toppings on the diagonal so everyone gets a fair share of each is said to be a feature of the Owari and western Mikawa style, made for celebrations.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Wakayama
- BouriA whole, unpeeled parent taro is simmered over two days for this New Year's dish from the Ayukawa area of Tanabe City's Ото̄ district. One account holds that villagers gave up pounding mochi for six hundred years to atone for once turning away a fleeing prince, eating this in its place.
- Goma ToufuRaw sesame is skinned, ground, and worked with mountain water and Yoshino arrowroot into a simmered block of shojin cuisine. Said to have supplied protein for monks who abstained from meat and fish, it's now a familiar Koyasan souvenir and a fixture on Japanese menus.
- Gonpachi no Abura ItameGonbachi, formally known as itadori knotweed, is blanched, peeled, and quickly stir-fried in oil for this spring dish. Thick, well-grown stalks that snap with a crisp pop are prized for a crunchy bite and a faint sourness.
- Hatagonbo ZushiA stout, round burdock called hatagonbo, grown on the steep red-clay slopes of Hashimoto City's Nishihata district, is sliced into rounds, hollowed at the center, and packed with vinegared rice. Cultivation had nearly died out until a local cooperative revived it around 2013, roughly seventy years on.
- Igami no NitsukeIgami — what southern Wakayama calls the parrotfish — is simmered whole in a sweet-salty broth. Feeding on seaweed among winter rocks leaves it free of any off-flavor, and around Tanabe it's said to be served head-to-tail in place of sea bream for New Year's.
- Inoko MochiNon-glutinous and sticky rice are cooked with taro, mashed, and shaped into balls coated with lightly salted sweet red bean paste. Offered to the harvest god on the Day of the Boar in the old tenth lunar month, it's also made for autumn festivals in parts of southern Wakayama.