Visit any sushi restaurant and it almost always arrives alongside your sushi: ginger pickled in sweet vinegar. In Japan this is called "gari". It is not a sushi topping, but it is an indispensable supporting player in the world of sushi. The name is said to come from the "gari-gari" crunching sound it makes when you bite into it.
Its role is to cleanse the palate between pieces. A small pinch after a fatty topping neatly resets your mouth, letting you greet the next piece with fresh taste buds. Ginger also has antibacterial properties, so in the Edo period — before refrigeration existed — it helped ward off food poisoning when eating raw fish.
Ginger is the standard at almost every sushi restaurant, but in recent years the major conveyor belt chain Kura Sushi made headlines by switching to "gari daikon" — daikon radish pickled in sweet vinegar instead. Adults who had always pictured ginger were puzzled, but since it isn't spicy, it seems to be a hit with children. Will gari keep evolving? It may be a supporting player, but it is one you can't take your eyes off.
