Sake Shots and Steel Blades: Inside Philly’s Wild Sushi Spectacle
A 250-pound bluefin tuna, sushi robots, and all the nigiri and maki you could eat. Here’s what went down at the Philly Tuna Cutting Show.
Kevin Yanaga, Carlos Wills, and Mitsuo Kaneko with a 250-pound bluefin tuna / Photograph by Jonathan Palmisano
On a recent Sunday afternoon, over 100 sushi fans piled into Starbolt to watch a Japanese tradition that goes way beyond any dining experience you’ll find in the city: the Philly Tuna Cutting Show.
The maguro kaitai show, as it’s called in Japan, is a culinary presentation meant to honor the tuna by breaking it down and serving prized cuts to the audience. I was expecting it to be a calm, serene, almost ceremonial process — like watching a master sushi chef find their flow state while making nigiri. But then chef Carlos Wills of Ogawa decapitated a 250-pound bluefin tuna with a sword-like maguro bocho knife made of steel, stuck a sake bottle into the fish’s sawed-off head, and started pouring shots directly into people’s mouths, and I realized that this was more than just performance art — this was a wild sushi party where controlled chaos meets craftsmanship.
From left: Chef Wills holding up the tuna’s head; food editor Kae Lani Palmisano taking a sake shot from said tuna head. / Photographs by Jonathan Palmisano
“We are trying to create a happy community in Philly by enjoying Japanese food culture,” Mitsuo Kaneko, robot specialist and president of Kaneko Trading, says. He, along with chef Kevin Yanaga of Yanaga Kappo Izakaya and 637 Sushi Club, organized the sold-out event, which, in addition to the live tuna cutting, featured sushi robots cranking out maki and nigiri; sake from Pennsylvania-based brewery Sango Kura; a tasting from Suntory Whiskey; fresh pour-overs from the Coffee Connoisseur Club (who is doing coffee and sushi pairings at 637 Sushi Club on April 27th for $150 per person); and MTN WTR water sourced from Mount Fuji.
The spectacle was exhilarating. Every time Yanaga and Wills removed a portion of the tuna, they’d hoist it into the air for the cheering crowd to see, before passing the large sections to other chefs to slice into bite-size pieces, all while Kaneko explained the various parts of the gigantic catch over the speakers.
From left: Chef Wills holding a maguro bocho knife over the tuna; chefs Wills and Yanaga holding up a piece of the tuna’s back. / Photographs by Kae Lani Palmisano
The precision of Yanaga’s and Wills’ knifework, the way the assisting chefs moved in synchronicity like figurines on a cuckoo clock, and the reverberation of Kaneko’s voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings of Starbolt made the entire experience feel like being inside a working fish market where the premium cuts were being auctioned off to the highest bidder.
But there was certainly enough fish to go around. Buttery slices of kama — the rare, ridiculously tender meat in the tuna’s collar — were presented by Wills to spectators off the body of his knife; hand rolls were wrapped with just a flick of the wrist; and hundreds of pieces of otoro and akami nigiri were passed around.
Chef Wills serving slices of kama off the body of his knife / Photograph by Kae Lani Palmisano
And all of it was served at peak freshness. “I thought it was incredibly impressive,” Brianna Lewis, an attendee, tells me. “I had never really seen the source of where you get these fine cuts of tuna from. And I think they made it really entertaining.”
Even after the feeding frenzy, there was still about half the tuna left. What remained went back to Yanaga Kappo Izakaya and 637 Sushi Club. Yanaga tells me he’ll dry-age a portion of it, and the rest will be enjoyed by his diners within the week.
There isn’t a set date for the next Philly Tuna Cutting Show, but Yanaga and Kaneko tell me they do want to make it a regular thing. “Maybe quarterly,” Kaneko says. Regardless of when the next one is, David Wesolowski of the Delicious City podcast has some solid advice: “Get here early! Do not be late to these events, because you’ll miss out.”
