Sushi chain Kyotaru, a subsidiary of Tokyo, Japan-based Yoshinoya Holdings, has suspended its annual survey of customers’ favorite sushi toppings (neta in Japanese) for 2020 as it focuses on dealing with pandemic-related matters, the company’s PR department told SeafoodSource.
With Kyotaru’s survey on hiatus, consumers have been turning to Japanese rankings site Ranking.net to share their sushi preferences. As the rankings stand now, salmon holds the top spot on Ranking.net, followed by bluefin tuna red meat, salmon eggs, and sea urchin roe (uni).
The rest of the list includes, in order: tuna medium fatty (chu-toro), shrimp, sea bream, scallop, yellowtail (buri), squid, yellowtail (hamachi), fatty tuna belly, negitoro (minced fatty tuna with green onion), and engawa (edge of a flounder tail fin).
The Ranking.net list features 41 species in all, and differs marginally from the most recent Kyotaru results, which involved a first-place tie between lean and medium fatty tuna, followed by salmon, negitoro, salmon eggs, shrimp, squid, salmon belly, yellowtail, sea urchin, scallop, conger eel, engawa, sweet shrimp, and fatty tuna belly.
In 2018, the Kyotaru ranking were: tuna (medium fatty), salmon, tuna (red meat), yellowtail, salmon belly, negitoro, salmon eggs, shrimp, scallop, conger eel, engawa, fatty tuna belly, squid, sweet shrimp, and egg.
In general, the Kyotaru rankings may be more accurate, as they are a survey of people who actually dined at a sushi restaurant, while the Ranking.net is based on online surveys open to the public. Both surveys have items from just two fish – salmon and bluefin tuna – dominating the top seeds: Six of the top 15 species in the Ranking.net survey and seven from Kyotaru’s standings are attributable to those two species.
Photo courtesy of Chris Loew/SeafoodSource
