The Rainbow Roll is the most cheerful invention of the American sushi bar, and its logic is as plain as its name: over a California Roll, lay slices of different fish the way a rainbow lays its bands. The orange of salmon, the ruby of tuna, the pearl of white fish, the green of avocado; niji 虹, the rainbow, descends onto the plate.

The roll was born in the 1980s, in the age of invention the California Roll had opened. The idea behind it is democratic: let one roll be the summary of the whole counter. Because each slice comes from a different fish, the flavor changes along the roll; no two bites of the same piece are alike. It looks like a dish invented for the indecisive; it was really invented for the curious.

Japanese cooking holds an old opinion about color: a plate should carry five of them, because the eye must be fed as fully as the palate. The Rainbow Roll reads that principle with American generosity; not measured brushstrokes but the whole palette, all at once.

As the rainbow is the reconciliation of rain and sun, this roll is the reconciliation of tradition and invention. And it behaves on the plate exactly like one: short-lived, unrepeatable, remembered.