[m_mueller]

I think it simply boils down to labour cost plus cost for the more expensive seafood:

* Sushi chefs need to be highly trained to make good Sushi, ~5 years. => Can't just pay them the basic 800 yen/hour, it's rather going to start at ~3000 yen.

* You need a few helping hands besides the chef. Fish, egg and even the rice is relatively labour intensive. Remember, it's not just plain rice, it's rice cooked with traditional methods to exactly the right point, mixed with vinaigre with an assistant venting by hand to give it a drier surface.

* Good Sushi needs to be prepared right before consumption, so the Sushi chef will spend at least a few minutes for each portion.

Adding all this up propably comes out at around 5-10 bucks labour cost for a decent portion of Sushi. Add to this the fish, the rent and some markup and you're at your $25. Nothing remarkable really, it's the same for most other high quality foods in large cities.

[archagon]

> Sushi chefs need to be highly trained to make good Sushi, ~5 years.

I just remembered an excellent book I read about an American sushi school, called "The Story of Sushi", where each student was made to learn to filet dozens of different kinds of fish with precision. So I can see why training to be the best of the best would take a long time. But how much of this experience is really necessary to make a standard, delicious nigiri platter? Most people don't go for the exotic options; they go for tuna, salmon, eel, etc. Do most sushi chefs even filet their own fish?

> Remember, it's not just plain rice, it's rice cooked with traditional methods to exactly the right point, mixed with vinaigre with an assistant venting by hand to give it a drier surface.

True, but how much of this detail is really necessary for the flavor, as opposed to fussiness and pride in the craft? In other words, in a blind test, would most people be able to tell the difference between quickly-made sushi rice and sushi rice made "exactly right"?

> Nothing remarkable really, it's the same for most other high quality foods in large cities.

I have to disagree! What other gourmet "fast-ish" food, suitable for lunch, costs $25 in a major city? In all the cities I've been to, most of the famous local fare is in the $10-$15 range at most. I've eaten some of the best food in the world for $10 a pop, easy. (Franklin's BBQ is a good example: hours of grueling work, $10 for half a pound of the best brisket in the world.)

GRANTED: I am speaking from a Californian perspective, so none of this may even apply. I am sure you can get some great $10 sushi in Tokyo and that $25 is reasonable for a more gourmet option, but here, you really have to go $25 and higher for sushi to taste good.

[solarmist]

> But how much of this experience is really necessary to make a standard, delicious nigiri platter?

That's exactly like ask why you should hire an engineer that has a degree vs someone who's gone though a coding bootcamp. If you're only doing standard things in a standard way then it's fine (this is by the numbers cooking, which most kitchens/restaurants prepare), so not every line cook needs to be a chef. They just need one in charge of the menu. Sushi is very close to the source ingredient, so for great sushi you do need every person that deals with the fish to be a full chef.

From everything I'd read and seen over the years. Yes, the good ones ($25+ a meal) do filet their own fish.

Also, food cost is a much bigger part of sushi because it's raw. Even a few hours fresher or few minutes less at room temperature makes a big difference, whereas cooked foods are much less sensitive to that kind of fluctuation.

> Franklin's BBQ is a good example: hours of grueling work, $10 for half a pound of the best brisket in the world.

The problem is that high quality sushi isn't by the numbers, but brisket is. You need to adapt quality sushi from day to day and fish to fish. Where brisket as long as you have good enough base ingredients you'll get an excellent brisket. It's more like a high end steak. You don't add many ingredients so even if you're the best chef in the world you can't make up for a mediocre steak.

[m_mueller]

I'm not exactly sure what your argument is. Sushi is local to Japanese culture, and just as you thought, Japan has some pretty decent Sushi for ~10$ (1000 yen), that already beats 99% of Sushi in foreign countries. I wouldn't call it gourmet, but it's prepared by a chef who knows what he's doing. That it costs more in California, where you don't have Tokyo's crazy Tsukiji wholesale fish market that allows them to have the world's best and freshest fish for reasonable prices every morning for 7 days a week, and where the job market for skilled Sushi chefs is much more a seller's market, doesn't surprise me.