Maybe with my scones...

I love sushi. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch, a snack, dinner; I can eat it every day and never tire of it. Every time I try to go full vegetarian, it is always sushi that stares me down and breaks my will and before I know it, I'm popping a piece of salmon into my mouth.

While I am a self-proclaimed purist when it comes to Japanese food -- restaurants like Nobu and Jun Sakamoto, the "best Japanese restaurant in Sao Paulo," don't do it for me with items like ceviche and tuna tartare with foie gras cluttering up their menus -- I have learned to embrace some of the adaptations made to sushi in both the US and Brazil. I will eat a California roll every once in a while (down here they use mango instead of avocado, which I found initially off-putting but have come to like).

I do, however, draw the line at certain offenses. Cream cheese, or "Philadelphia" as the Brazilians call it, does not belong anywhere near rice, seaweed, and fish (unless perhaps they are sitting next to each other in your refrigerator). The "hot roll" -- a sushi roll, usually filled with salmon and cream cheese, that is deep fried so that it becomes hot and crispy on the outside and is then doused in a teriyaki-esque sauce -- is hugely popular down here. Needless to say, not on my plate.

Until a few weeks ago I thought that the hot roll was the ultimate in sushi bastardization that I have encountered. On my birthday, I was elated to dine at a new (to me) conveyor belt sushi place, I am a sucker for the circulating, color-coded plates that you can grab at will. Things were going smashingly, the sushi was quite good, even the miso soup passed the test, and then I saw it. Coming towards me down the line were two small balls of rice wrapped in pieces of salmon to create a small space which was filled with cream cheese and...

...a dollop of JAM!

At first I thought I had to have been mistaken, that it was fish roe or some other seafood-based substance, but, no, it was bright red jam. Still in shock, I watched as one of my girlfriends picked up the plate with the jam sushi on it, exclaimed, "This one is my favorite," and popped one of the pieces into her mouth.