Metro

Sushi pro: fish ‘pharm’ wrong Rx

Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto wouldn’t prescribe sushi from a drugstore.

Though the former Nobu head chef always dreamed sushi would one day be as popular as pizza in New York, spicy tuna rolls being for sale at Duane Reade is not what he had in mind.

The pharmacy chain recently started selling packages of the Japanese seafood treat at a Midtown store, at prices ranging from $5.99 to $8.99.

“It’s good you can buy medicine while you are there — they have the painkillers and now the pain-makers,” Morimoto, who now owns a chain of eponymous restaurants, told The Post. “At Dean & DeLuca, fine, but at Duane Reade? I don’t know.”

Fortunately, the Iron Chef has an iron stomach. Overall, he rated the tuna sushi, spicy tuna and California rolls currently for sale at the chain’s location at Sixth Avenue and West 51st Street “a five” on a scale of 1 to 10.

But only if consumed on the day it’s prepared. The sushi packages remain on the refrigerated shelves for two days.

“The Department of Health would like this sushi because it is kept cold, but that makes the rice turn hard and tough,” he said. “On the second day, no way.”

After 36 hours of refrigeration, the rolls would taste like bricks.

“I don’t want to call it sushi after it has been sitting in the refrigerator for two days,” he said.

At Morimoto NYC, business is brisk enough that fish would never sit around that long, he said. His spicy tuna roll also costs more than $5.99.

“I can afford to buy fresh fish every day — at my restaurant,” he said.

Duane Reade would not say how many locations will begin selling sushi or whether the $1.1 billion sale of the company to Walgreens, which was announced yesterday, will have any impact.

Like much supermarket sushi, the tuna appeared to be a frozen yellow fin that is often injected with dyes and chemicals to keep its color from changing.

Morimoto said the fish seemed no worse than most prepackaged sushi, but the texture of the rice was unpleasant.

“It’s edible, but the main problem is the rice,” he said.

The rolls were made by machines largely able to replicate the technique Morimoto says would take an average person “two months to learn if they trained eight hours per day.”

Anything that brings sushi to more people is good, he said.

“I guess, in a way, I am happy that sushi has made it to the drugstore,” he said.

“But on the other hand, I worry about quality control. If there’s one incident, sushi would get a bad reputation.”

Morimoto said he would gladly eat the Duane Reade sushi if he were stranded on a desert island — and “might even have a second.”

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com