City INFORMER

was born to roll (nori means seaweed, of course) sooooo...

Tojo, though, is the only one who has gone so far as to try to copyright the roll. If that tenacity isn’t cold hard proof, I don’t know what is.

What all these chefs seem to have in common is that they wisely saw cooked seafood and hidden seaweed as an opportunity to convince picky-ass white people to try sushi. In Tojo’s case, it was on one fateful evening in ’74 (I am picturing “The Way We Were” blasting on the radio and Tojo with beautiful, Fawcett-esque feathered hair, and I encourage you to do the same) that he flipped over seaweed-pressed rice to wrap up Dungeness crab, avocado, egg crepe and spinach to offer maki-phobic customers a gateway bite. He called it the “Inside Out” roll, and it was a hit. Perhaps too much of a hit: copycat rolls started popping up over the next few years. The Japanese media saw this unorthodox item taking off on the West Coast of North America, and dubbed it with its famous ’Fornia moniker.

Even if Tojo didn’t invent the Cali roll, he’s got other smash hits to act as a foundation for his incredible legacy as the greatest sushi chef in the city— and probably even in Canada. The B.C. roll: ever heard of it? Yeah, that’s a Tojo joint. Ditto the rainbow roll and spider roll. So if he and I rolled (get it?!) into a party at the same time, and both of us claimed to be the inventor of Gogurt, the portable, snackable yogurt tubes ideal for cool teens on the go and kids who hate spoons? Well... I know who I would believe.