Deep End Dining

Short Story by Lexie Fox

It is pyrotechnic dining, eating on a tightrope, fish as a circus stunt, no net.

See chef Motoyuki Akahori bow, his serious smile, a flash of bleached teeth. Notice the imperceptible twitch of his wrist that sends the fugu hiki spinning up behind his back, high, higher, sharp, pointed, descending in a tumbling, glittering tornado, till he snatches the knife handle out of the air and the flinching diners remember how to breathe.

See the fish on the marble slab, bloated, scaleless, still pulsing, grunting. For the torafugu – the tiger blowfish – it’s a toss-up. Is it death by a thousand cuts or death by letting the oxygen in?