As introduced in the article, Is revolving Sushi in Japan Halal?, revolving Sushi or Kaiten Zushi in Japanese, is the most popular food outlet in Japan. Sushiro (スシロー), one of the revolving Sushi chains, is the most popular restaurant according to some surveys. Their quality is known as the best within the revolving Sushi chains, so that the restaurants can be found almost everywhere, even in the countryside.
If Sushiro can be Halal, then Muslims traveling to Japan would have no worries at all. However, unfortunately, the restaurant should be avoided by Muslims if you would like to choose Halal meals. Let us show you the resasons why.
If you want to check the etiquettes or knowledge about Sushi, also check this link!
Isn’t Sushi Muslim-friendly?
As we have explained in the previous article, Sushi is not a Muslim-friendly meal, because they use alcoholic seasoning in their rice and soy sauce. Alcohol in the seasoning is to preserve the quality longer, so that reasonable or cheaper soy sauce may have more risk of alcohol.
Though it has some alcohol inside, some of you might think that it is still okay to eat, because Sushi will never have pork. Well, unfortunately, when it comes to talk about Sushi in Sushiro, it has a risk of contamination with pork, even though you choose Sushi with only fish meat.
How can you say Sushi in Sushiro has a risk of contamination with pork?
According to Japanese standard, it is a responsibility of a company to show what allergen is contained in their meal. There are 28 allergens defined by the department, which includes pork, chicken, gelatin and beef. Although it does not have alcohol in the list, we can still tell if the product contains any meat or not, which is the most important factor for most Muslims.
Sushiro is a Sushi restaurant, so you can never imagine they are using meat. However, the information officially published by Sushiro is clearly saying that their Sushi is made in the same factory where they handle pork meat.
6th from right and the rightmost rows mean Pork and Gelatin respectively. Black circle means they include the allergen, while White circle means the dishes are made in the same factory/machinery. There are some menus that do not have any pork/gelatin ingredients, but in such cases, they use chicken instead which is not religiously processed.
As of July 2023, the only 3 menus that does not have any animal product are as follows:
Frid Sardine Bone chips (鯵の骨せんべい)
Thick Potato (厚切りポテト)
Fried Potato (フライドポテト)
Strawberry Milk Pudding (あまおう苺ミルクプリン)
Warabi Mochi desert and caramelized sweet potato (わらび餅と大学芋の欲張り盛り)
Warabi Mochi (京都峯嵐堂のわらび餅)
Frozen Mango
Ice cream
Though there are so many choices in Sushiro, it is quite difficult to find something suitable for Muslims.
In conclusion
We are of course not judging if the food is Halal or not, because we believe it is your choice to decide what to eat. However, to answer the question Is Sushiro Halal? we have to say that they are not free from pork contamination.
Also, it seems like they are frequently changing the recipe. Although it is listed in the safe list, it may contain some ingredients derived from animal after some weeks. From this reason, Sushiro may not be a good choice for many Muslims.
