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Sushi Bait and Switch Reaction Swift and Strong: What's Next, Shoeamaki?

Posted by Ed Levine, August 23, 2008 at 4:00 PM

Sushi Yoshii, photograph by Robyn Lee

According to Tuesday's New York Times, two Manhattan high school senior discovered that the luxury white tuna serious eaters crave may turn out to be a much cheaper fish, Mozambique tilapia.

In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.

They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

I coached James Stoeckle, the brother of sushi sleuth Kate, in a weekend basketball league a few years ago, and though he was a fine player, we never discussed sushi. My bad.

Today's New York Times reports that some of New York City's best-known sushi purveyors and chefs reacted strongly to the news that some sushi establishments are serving mislabeled fish.

Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin told the paper's Alan Feuer: "It is impossible to mislead people who have knowledge." About that tuna-for-tilapia swap, Ripert implied that only rank raw-fish amateurs would not know the difference: "It is like the difference between a rabbit and a chicken."

Hey, Eric, I thought rabbit tasted like chicken.

Veda Nishikawa, a manager at New York's megapriced sushi palace Masa, said that chef-owner Masayoshi Takayama himself handled every piece of fish in his place: "If Chef Masa doesn't know what he's working with, then we're really in trouble."

Besides, he said, all of the fish served at Masa comes from trusted purveyors in Japan, the clear implication being that fishmongers in Japan would never stoop to selling you tilapia while calling it white tuna.

My favorite reaction of all was from Richie Notar, the former Studio 54 doorman turned Nobu partner.

After explaining that all the raw fish that Nobu buys comes from people with whom they have longstanding relationships built on trust—a kind of marriage similar to the one Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro have on set (ahh, don't you just love how Notar never misses an opportunity to invoke Nobu investor DeNiro's name?)—Notar said that a lot of people who eat sushi are not all that discerning, anyway: "I swear to God, there's some people, you could put shoes over rice and they wouldn't even know." Blue suede shoeamaki, anyone?

Related: Three years ago in the New York Times Marion Burros discovered that farmed salmon was being sold as wild salmon. All these fish bait-and-switch stories give new meaning to the expression "fish story." They also bring to mind what a legendary fish store owner told me when I asked him how he buys fish: "I don't buy the fish. I buy the man."

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Tags: scams, scandals, sushi