On an early November afternoon, Michimasa Nakamura, of Tokyo's Sushi M, is busy brainstorming.
He's pondering the set of new recipes that arrived via email earlier that morning. The instructions call for ingredients typically absent from the sushi chef's repertoire — coconut milk, tamarind, Thai rice and fish sauce. For Nakamura, the challenge is to interpret the recipes and present them as part of a tasting menu that still "expresses Sushi M's style." The catch is that he has only one month to perfect the dishes, and he can't ask for guidance because he has no idea who created them.
