Senior Connor Murphy rolls through Costa selling rice balls

By Julia Oudiz

Online Features Editor

Senior Connor Murphy rolls through Costa selling rice balls to students who are eager for a change in their average lunch.

Murphy began making rice balls in his junior year of high school for his track teammates. He wanted to make food for his teammates, who then suggested that he sell them to students at Costa, Murphy said. He sells the rice balls at a table in the cafeteria during lunch on most school days.

“Once I started selling rice balls, I thought, this is getting me a lot of money and I could start selling more,” Murphy said. “People don’t usually have good lunches, so they come to me.”

Link: Read more about the several types of sushi rice ball recipes 

The rice balls that Murphy makes are shaped into a triangle with seaweed coating it. The rice balls are not called sushi because they do not have fish inside of them, and it is cheaper to make rice balls than to make sushi, Murphy said.

“If I wanted to, I could put in fish or make sushi, but I think that making rice balls is easier to make,” Murphy said. “Sushi is a lot harder to prepare because you have to buy meat which is pretty expensive, especially tuna and salmon.”

Murphy has made approximately five hundred rice balls since junior year, he said. He sells them for one dollar and fifty cents each and toppings are an additional fifty cents. The toppings that he offers include seaweed with dried eggs, shaved fish, and salmon.

Link: Watch this video about making sushi rice balls

“I sell to anyone who comes to me first,” Murphy said. “If students want them, I just prepare it and give it to them. It’s always up to if I’m feeling okay and usually on Mondays I don’t make it because I just had a weekend off and coming back [to school] is tiresome.

The one aspect of making the rice balls that Murphy dislikes is the preparation, which includes shaping, cooking and wrapping the rice balls. The most rice balls that Murphy can make at once is eight, because it takes thirty minutes to form and shape them and thirty to forty minutes to cook them.

“After I’m done shaping them, I have to wrap them up in some sort of saran wrap, and it gets time consuming,” Murphy said. “I have to make sure there is no holes in it that could make it look bad. I like to keep a good quality and make people happy by keeping it clean and making it look edible.”

Murphy’s goal is to sell the rice balls to as many people as he can. Costa senior Ethan Stolidis, one of Murphy’s customers, thinks that an advantage to Murphy making the rice balls is that he meets more people that he would not usually talk to through his sales.

“I want to see him become a chef and own a five star restaurant,” Stolidis said. “I think he has potential because I watched him make sushi and he is very dedicated and concentrated. He doesn’t let anything get in the way of his sushi.”

Murphy hopes to be able to make more varieties of rice balls with different toppings and shapes, Murphy said. His goal is to buy different products to put in the rice balls and to sell a larger amount to students in the future.

“When I make rice balls and give it to people and when they enjoy it, that makes me feel good because that’s something that I made,” Murphy said. “If it tastes good, then I feel good about myself and my skills.”