Knowing The Food You Eat

Even though your sushi is fresh, perhaps flown in from Japan if you're hobnobbing it at some posh sushi or ceviche place, it's been frozen. The Times looks at the little-known government-stipulated (and widely accepted, though not really enforced) practice of freezing the raw fish you eat. The freezing helps kill parasites, which is always okay with Gothamist. Restaurants that use at least some frozen sushi: Nobu, Geisha, Jewel Bako, Sushi Yasuda, even Masa. One wholesaler gives this inside knowledge: "Fresh-frozen, re-freshed, flash-chilled, take your pick. It's all frozen." Of course, when serving the fish for $10 a pop, the new trend is towards "flash-freezing"/"super-freezing" which freezes the fish at 70 degrees below 0 (versus the 10 degrees below 0), so the fish maintains a "just like fresh" taste. And Jewel Bako owner Jack Lamb (and one of Paper's most beautiful people, along with wife, Grace) uses a medical freezer (for storing transplant organs) to store his fish.

In other health-related food news, the Carnegie Deli was closed for a day or so due to poor health department findings. The Post noted "insufficiently hot turkey wings" and the Times described, "Thirteen pounds of tuna were found at a relatively balmy 45 degrees - 4 degrees too warm - while a pile of potato pancakes was a tepid 91 degrees, which was 49 degrees too cool." You can never be too careful of balmy fish salads - a friend of Gothamist once had whitefish salad from a University Place bagel shop and was taken to the emergency room soon after.

Learn more about what the Food and Drug Administration is up to. And check out their Office of Seafood.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in Food on April 8, 2004 9:20 AM

Comments [rss]

hoofin

At least fish aren't pumped up with a bunch of antibiotics and growth hormone.

joe s

Ah, the Billy Goat Tavern, source of the Cubs curse. Belushi's sketch was just a mild exaggeration... "cheeburger cheeburger cheeburger...no pepsi, coke."

pjh

Re: Jen, agreed...whitefish turnover...funny stuff...sales lingo....reminds me of that Belushi diner sketch..."cmon cmon we gotta have turnover...we gotta have turnover...what you want.....cheeseburger!"

Jen

I love whitefish salad myself, but you have to be careful at places that don't seem to usually sell it. You know, whitefish turnover, etc.

Frankenstein

The Japanese have been freezing tuna on the boat for decades at this point; once in the late 1980s, I visited the Tokyo fishmarket and saw them unloading and auctioning off frozen tuna carcasses; the fish were frozen so cold that they were bouncing off the concrete floor.

pjh

Just tried whitefish salad for the first time at "Lox, Stock, and Bagel" in East Brunswick, NJ. Why was I afraid of whitefish? So good. r Highly recommend. I'll take my chances for that stuff. You have to play the percentages when eating out.

Christa

I know rationally, especially when I go into a midtown bodega and buy tuna rolls from the salad bar, that I am not getting fresh stuff, not even safe stuff all the time, but I eat it anyway. I can't help myself. I eat the salmon every chance I get though the government guideline is once a month. I eat the stuff nobody orders, like the urchin. I avoid the all-you-can-eat places because I am afraid of what I will do. I need a support group.

SteveO

FYI:

This went unreported, that Peter Luger was closed Tuesday night. They had called to cancel my reservation, I was walking to the place already and didn't believe that they had "equipment failure", so I walked by, peeked in and the place was closed. Who knows why an ALL CASH restaurant would have 'equipment failure'.

Speculation abound.