Sushi chef brings skills to Skowhegan

FOOD ART: Chef Jackie Tang makes a sushi dish called “I love you” a roll made with salmon recently at the Fusion Buffet restaurant in Skowhegan.

Staff photo by David Leaming

SO MANY CHOICES: A variety of sushi dishes await customers at the Fusion Buffet restaurant in Skowhegan.

Staff photo by David Leaming

SKOWHEGAN -- Skowhegan is on a roll.

Tang, who is from China, performs his knife-wielding, cuisine art of elaborately prepared fish and other ingredients at the new Fusion Buffet, an Asian restaurant on Madison Avenue.

Looking every part the sushi chef in a traditional Japanese men's printed smock and matching bandanna, Tang, through a translator, said he learned to make sushi rolls and sashimi in New Jersey and that he moved to the United States five years ago.

He said being Chinese makes no difference in creating dishes that are appealing to the eye and to the palate

"A lot of people in Skowhegan like sushi," said Fusion manager Ada Chen, translating for Tang, who speaks little English. "Skowhegan, they (didn't) have it and I wanted to make it, like, different. A lot of people tried it. It's different."

Chen said she and Tang come from the same city in China and when her family took over operations of the former China Ting restaurant earlier this month, she invited him to Skowhegan to work.

Sushi is a Japanese dish of vinegar-flavored rice, cooked but served cold, wrapped in dried seaweed with raw or prepared fish or vegetables. Sometimes it's topped with fish eggs or a spicy sauce.

It is traditionally served with soy sauce, wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and sliced pickled ginger root.

The six-inch roll is sliced and the pieces dipped in the sauce.

The fish can be tuna, white fish, salmon, crab, red snapper or eel. It can be raw, pickled, blanched or soaked in Sake, Japanese rice wine.

At Fusion, the fish is delivered fresh every two days. Some also comes frozen.

Tang works at his sushi-making station where the ingredients are rolled tightly in a small bamboo mat. The rolls comes with names such as dragon, rainbow summer and autumn -- fried, soft-shell crab, cucumber and mango and topped with fish roe.

The dishes are placed on one of the restaurant's buffet tables, where they are rotated every 90 minutes or so, Chen said. Special sushi dishes also are made to order by Tang. The dishes also are served with Japanese seaweed and toasted sesame seed salad.

Fusion waitress Andi Flagg of Skowhegan said she originally was a hard sell on sushi, but found Tang to be masterful at creating food that looks and tastes good.

"Some of them were a little skeptical, but once they try it they like it," Flagg said of customers. "I'm not a big sushi person -- I don't really even like fish a whole lot -- but I've tried it and if I like it, anybody will like it. He's an artist. I love watching him."

Dennis Arsenault of Skowhegan, who has become a regular customer at Fusion, said he has been eating sushi for 30 years.

"It tastes as good as it looks," he said over a sushi lunch on Friday. "It's great. I had it in California, I had it in London -- it's just as good."