Uni - urchin roe sensory evaluation

I have always loved Japanese food and in the city of São Paulo is easy to find excellent restaurants specialized in this type of food. Furusato is a perfect example of well served traditional Japanese food.

As a challenge for Blog 3 in Theory of Food, we supposed to try a type of food that we have never tasted before. I usually like to discover new flavours, and I have already tasted some roes, such as ikura (salmon roe), tobiko (flying fish roe), and caviar before. But for this assignment, I decided to taste a different roe: urchin roe. In Japanese, this delicacy is known as “UNI”. So, I picked the Uni Gunkamaki for the task, sophisticated sushi with uni on top.

At the first look, uni does not look tasty at all. The colour is a not appetizing orange/yellowish hue, and the texture is soft and mushy. Its smell is subtle and made me remind the seawater and brought some awkward freshness. For my hearing, I could not make any relation to anything. I can say that it is a “deaf dish”. When you touch it, the sensation is like you were touching something nasty and unpleasant. Summarizing all these 4 senses of taste, I would not taste it.

But I am courageous and brave, so I decided to keep going. Just a drop of shoyu and done: the whole piece was in my mouth. The first thing I tasted was the saltiness, the seawater, the shoyu. Right after that, this weird mineral-rocky taste involves your whole mouth, and the first thing you think is: it tastes urchin. I mean, the image of an urchin just popped up in my mind. It was like an explanation of what “terroir” means. Urchins live into the salty sea water surrounded by rocks. And the taste is exactly that.

Uni is so complex that a few seconds later you feel a sort of sweetness just after the first bite. I believe that is the taste of the roe itself. And then, the meatiness! Oh God, this is pure umami. If you do not understand the concept of umami, try uni, and you will understand it. After you swallow the sushi, you can feel all these tastes passing through your throat and in your mouth, these flavours start to combine, and suddenly it is like an explosion.

The feeling, according to my memories, is the same when I tried ikura sushi (salmon roe) with a raw quail egg on the top. The layers of flavours in your mouth continue to change, and after 10 minutes, you still can feel some notes of the ocean on your tongue and palate. If you rub your tongue on the palate, you can feel some tasty greasiness. Very complex and unique.

I surprisingly enjoyed a lot this experience. I was not expecting much based on how uni looks like, but I would definitely try it again. Talking to the sushi man, he recommended me to try with some lime over it next time. He explained to me that the taste and flavours are enhanced by the acidity of the lime, creating one more layer on your tongue.

This experience made me understand a concept that usually is related to people: do not judge anybody by its appearance. In food, the idea remains the same. This mushy, yellowish, shapeless, soft thing called uni is, in fact, delicious!