If you love sushi, then you better eat as many as you can today, because if Jiro Ono's words were true, the most prized ingredients may no longer be available within the next few years.
Speaking with Japan's Foreign Correspondents Club, 89-year-old Jiro Ono, considered one of the country's best and popular sushi masters for decades, shared that because of the wrong fishing practices, it wouldn't be long before the most prized domestic tuna will be gone or be available in a very limited supply.
Jiro started training to become a sushi master at a very young age. As a family man, he opened his own bar called Sukiyabashi Jiro in the basement floor of Tsukamoto Building in Ginza 4-chome with very limited seats.
However, because he makes the best sushi, based on reviews from food experts, his little restaurant garnered national attention with people reserving a spot at least a few months to a year in advance and paying more than $250 for a set of 20 pieces of different types of sushi. His younger son opened his own in Roppongi Hills, a 2-star Michelin, while his older is doing most of the supervision and management in Ginza.
Dignitaries and other high-profile celebrities and politicians like U.S. President Barack Obama have dined in his 3-star Michelin restaurant. His sushi bar-and his style of preparing them-became the subject of a 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Meanwhile, according to his 53-year-old son Yushikazu, as sushi bars and Japanese restaurants serving them became popular not only in their country but all over the world, their domestic industry is now compelled to grow the fish in a farm. With the limited supply of good tuna, sushi dealers are now buying Atlantic bluefin.
Aside from the tuna, other common sushi ingredients like ark shell and abalone are in danger of being available at a limited supply, since catchers often harvest as many of them as possible in one go, including the young ones that need more than 3 years to mature.
