Rocks, salt, rice and raw fish.

More than a millennia ago, in Southeast Asia, those were the ingredients for making sushi. Today’s sushi chefs are limited only by their imaginations.

The term sushi actually refers to the sticky rice used in creating the savory and healthy snacks, and in the beginning the rice was thrown away. The practice got its start centuries before refrigeration was available, when raw fish was preserved by packing it with rice and salt and pressing it with a heavy stone. Rice helped ferment the fish and lent the seafood a vinegary flavor, but only the fish was eaten.

Over time, as food shortages spread in the 15th and 16th centuries, the fermentation process was shortened from as much as a year to a month, and the rice was eaten with the fish. However, the curing process made the fish sour.

The fermentation was sped up even more over time, and today in Japan there is still a form called narezushi that requires at least 24 hours of fermentation. Not everyone appreciates the sour taste of this sort of sushi.

During Japan’s Edo period (1603-1967), especially in the early 19th century when urban areas grew rapidly, there was a need for “fast food.” Street vendors proliferated, and they eliminated sushi’s time-consuming fermentation process by adding vinegar to the rice, to get that familiar tangy flavor. The fish was fresh, the sticky rice tasty and people loved it.

“Since sushi came to the United States, it needed to be tweaked,” says Ben Cachila, a partner in Emi, a new sushi and fusion restaurant in Pawleys Island, S.C. Cachila’s father-in-law, Shozo Sakata, is the sushi chef.

“Some sushi chefs try to come up with gimmicks, and you do whatever makes the customer happy. Shozo likes to keep truer to the natural state, and the art is not based on overmanipulating [the ingredients]. Sushi is very visual. The colors come from the fresh vivid colors of the fish –- that’s basically [the chef’s] palette. To complete the picture the sushi chef tries to draw from the way things are in a natural state…and just enhance the flavor.”

Knives are the sushi artist’s brushes, and their heritage descends from the superior steel of Samurai swords. In Japan, sushi chefs go through an apprenticeship for as long as a decade.

“You go to a restaurant and you’re paid nearly nothing,” he says. “You clean, mop. You don’t even touch a knife until two or three years down the line. Then you get a very tiny knife and you cut vegetables for a couple of years, make vegetable garnishes and learn the knife craft.”

“In America you have to be more creative, make it more appealing so customers will try it,” says Rick Miyashita, the sushi chef at Paradise Bar & Grill in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. “One they’re enjoying the sushi and realize it’s ‘real food,’ then they eat it up.”