Mislabeled fish at LA's high-end sushi restaurants

If not told, I always do. And then when I go home and google it (or the approximation of what the chef said that I scrawled down) I often discover it’s not the same fish that has the English name he first used.

Hi @linus,

Not at all; after we engage with the sushi chef on the very first piece (politely asking, “What’s the Japanese name of this fish?”), we almost never have to ask any more (they switch to presenting each piece with the Japanese name).

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+1, just like having to learn all the froggy names back in the day.

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That’s pretty much what I was thinking the deal probably was with good sushi bars.

I think the issue is complicated by several additional factors:

  • From what I’ve read, some of the Japanese words used at sushi bars (e.g. hirame) aren’t species-specific.
  • Fish flown in from Japan may have no English common name since they’re not known here, or only sushi experts would recognize the English name.
  • A sushi chef who buys fish not imported from Japan may sometimes use species that don’t have precise Japanese names because they’re not known there.

My limited personal experience is that at a first-rate place, if I sit at the bar and talk with the chef, if his English is half-decent he can tell me about each fish in great detail.

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That article is one of the most hilarious ones yet in how ignorant it is

It seems like every year or so one of these threads pops up and I feel obligated, as someone who knows just an absurd amount about fish (and rarely gets a chance to put that knowledge to any use) to try to educate people on why this “problem” exists.

I put that in quotes because it’s really not much of a problem at all. I’m sure in some restaurants you get some really bad switches, like tilapia for… well anything, really! And this could happen in sushi bars, I suppose, but a diner should probably expect that if he orders snapper in a shabby sushi bar off a conveyor belt for a dollar, he’s just going to to be getting some kind of white fish substitute.

The problem basically comes from the fact that there are very similar fish in different oceans that often only have local names (which are often what they call a totally different fish in another area.)

What a California fisherman calls a “halibut,” for example, is more properly called a flounder, as it in the Paralychthis genus, not Hippoglossus. But we ain’t gonna change! And is there much difference in the taste or quality of the fish? At similar sizes, no. And at any size, for sushi purposes, the flounder is BETTER. The hippoglossids are much bigger, and at the bigger sizes will have a beefier grain to the flesh and can even get a little sinewy intramuscularly. This is the fish you see in the supermarkets – the very thick fillets. Not so great for sushi. So I see no issue with labeling the fish halibut, if that’s the name that best matches the fish the consumer expects to eat.

I see no problem also with calling the NZ snapper a snapper. It’s what we’d call a bream, but we don’t really have anything like it in the states. In NZ, everyone calls it a snapper. I don’t see how it’s fish mislabeling. It’s not an inferior product, it’s not an objectively incorrect name, and it’s what someone in the know about sushi expects when they order snapper because it’s a very similar fish analogue to what they call madai (“true snapper”) in Japan.

@Bookwich mentioned the yellowtail being mislabeled, but they don’t say what it is. I found that curious too, especially since in the graphic at the bottom, the silhouette next to “yellowtail” is a yellowtail snapper – what they call “yellowtail” in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic. In no way, shape, or form, is that ever what anyone expects to get when they order yellowtail. They expect the species (or one of its handful of subspecies) we call yellowtail here in CA – Seriola lalandi. Our CA subspecies is S. lalandi dorsalis. The one from Japan is a ridiculously closely related fish, S. quinqueradiata. It’s also what they farm in Hawai’i under the “hamachi” brand. It’s much fattier, and IMO, much better (although I eat plenty of local YT, happily.) If I see hamachi or buri, I expect this. But it’s simply not objectively wrong to call them all yellowtail, or even buri. They’re analogous. Just like fluke, CA halibut, and “olive flounder” are analogous. Just like madai and NZ snapper are analogous.

Some funny asides: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and that’s very true for fish. I disagree that market price or local attitudes make one fish objectively superior to another (though I will reiterate that I do feel tilapia under any other name is a scam :joy:) For example, we have a fish called an opaleye that is pretty much unanimously regarded as just terrible. Most of the chubs (that’s the family it’s in) around the world are considered terrible by locals. But when an LA food critic eats mejina, the incredibly close analogue from Japan, he doesn’t seem to think it’s inferior.

Second aside, there’s no such thing as “white tuna,” so any claim that it’s a misrepresentation is just illogical. Albacore is the only tuna that can be sold as “white meat tuna,” i.e., with that on the can.
White meat tuna isn’t the same thing as white tuna. Nobody anywhere calls albies “white tuna.” Except kind of in Japan, where it’s sometimes called “shiro maguro,” which translates to white tuna, but more commonly for sushi it’s called binnaga anyway. When I see white tuna, I expect escolar, because that’s the only thing I ever really see called “white tuna.” If they used escolar and called it albacore, that’d be misrepresentation because that’s a screwy label for escolar – “white tuna” isn’t.

Basically, this boils down to two things: screwy local common names, and accepted market names.

Unless we start using scientific names for fish, you aren’t going to know the exact species you’re eating most of the time, especially when it comes to a name like “snapper” that’s widely used around the world for many different genera of fish. But the kicker is, like the opaleye/mejina/kevineats example shows, most people don’t really know much about what fish they’re eating anyway. So the mislabeling “problem,” especially where higher-end sushi is concerned, is ultimately bullshit. When you go to a good sushi bar, you can trust the imatae is serving you something of quality and without any deceptive intent. And unless you’re a real hardcore fish geek like me, and usually even then, any variety in the exact species and origin of the fish is a triviality.

Little PS, there is no way in hell Asanebo sold a mackerel as red snapper. They are just too starkly different. That was clearly an accidental error by the author or his team, or maybe they were served the wrong thing by mistake. In any event, it’s pretty clear they grabbed an order of mackerel and by someone’s mistake put it in the “snapper” box. And that fish conservation guy who said fluke and halibut were “vastly different,” and made that analogy with crab/fake crab, is a complete idiot.

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This.

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And this.

I’ve had good sushi chefs tell me, “don’t order that, I have it because customers demand it but let me give you this instead.”

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Well said! THANK YOU! :clap:

LOL! Well said, we both always seem to be in these threads. Thanks for saving me the time typing something similar out.

Mejina is a Girella which is only one family (Kyphosidae) of fish considered within the larger category of “Chub”; its a Sea Chub but “Chubs” also include carps (different family which have a completely different meat structure (grain size and density) than Mejina. Mejina is also a commercially valuable fish in Japan. And what does appreciation of a Japanese fish have to do with not appreciating a local fish? Perhaps the Japanese fish IS better, and from what I’ve seen from multiple trips to Japan and Tsukiji and other fish market in Japan, Japanese fish IS often better because the Japanese seafood industry generally uses better harvesting, storage, and handling techniques than the US seafood industry.

Exact species and origin of fish is a triviality? This is ludicrous. I worked in a retail seafood market, purchasing, cutting, and selling dozens of kinds of fish, including numerous California Rockfish (all Sebastes genus), and Sushi grade seafood, including Japanese fish. Similar or even identical species of fish from different areas taste different, and fish of the same Genus but different species can be very different. Size and the season that fish were caught also matter as far as meat density, oil content, and flavor. That’s why Mexican Bluefin tastes different than a Japanese Bluefin (same species), and a Philippines Yellowfin tastes different than a Hawaiian Yellowfin (and why Tunas are often graded based on quality), why small tunas are, generally, much less than larger tunas (meat texture, density, and fat content are very different), a Fiji Albacore is WAY different than an Oregon Albacore (lean vs. rich; dense vs. soft), a Japanese Hiramasa meat can taste and look better different than a California Yellowtail (both are Seriola Ialandi). If it didn’t matter, why are so many Sushi bars using Japanese fish when similar or even identical fish are available locally? Water quality, current strength, temperature all affect fish, e.g., why wild winter fish are noticeably more fatty than summer fish (e.g. Saba) and an Inada or Warasa (younger Japanese Yellowtail) is a completely different fish than a Buri (larger Japanese Yellowtail); that’s also why there are different names of the same fish in Japanese for different ages/sizes. Quality and taste are also directly related to handling and handling techniques vary greatly from country to country, e.g. Ikejime in Japan vs. dumping fish into an unrefrigerated crate is origin-related. Nearly every person that I’ve spoken with in the food industry that has worked with seafood will tell you that species and origin do matter.

And if species and location didn’t matter, why is there such a drastic difference in flavor between certain farmed Atlantic Salmon​, let alone the difference in both taste and texture between Atlantic farmed salmon and wild Pacific salmon (both Salmonidae family), and noticeable differences in color, texture, density and flavor between Chum, Sockeye, and King Salmon? If it didn’t matter, all seafood prices would be the essentially the same, and all Sushi restaurant would essentially be the same.

Perhaps you can’t tell the difference between species or origin. That doesn’t mean that species and origin are trivial.

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I think that’s a misdirected post.

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Of course it’s not trivial, however, most of us are not in the seafood industry, so we place our trust in the chefs and retailers serving us to know these things, and to give us what they say they are giving us.

Well what occurs when the industry and chefs are purposely or unknowingly (but making no effort to check) sourcing inferior/cheaper products and telling us, the restaurant going public, that they are using superior or more expensive ingredients? I know this wasn’t mentioned in the article but for example, if a sushi/fish purveyor was marketing farmed atlantic salmon as wild salmon, I would be outraged as the cost difference and the fish quality would be drastically different. I don’t think any counter that “it’s all salmon” would be acceptable to me personally. And while I do agree that this is an example that is different from discerning what we call a halibut from a flounder, a huge selling point in sushi and other high end fish, whether warranted or not, is the origin of fish and the type/species of fish being sold.

So in cases where we are being misled, either purposely or without malice, is the onus on the public just to be discerning or shrug and say “yup, that’s ok…I trust them”? I think that’s kind of ridiculous, especially when there’s mounting evidence to the contrary that best practices are not being followed within the industry.

This reminds me of the Kobe beef issue a couple of years back, where restaurants listed “Kobe” beef on their menus. I’m sure the more discerning consumers, such as many users on this board, knew that the “Kobe” offering was false since it was unlikely if not impossible to source real Kobe beef. But I’m sure many people were upsold on the Kobe beef and paid quite a bit more money for a purposely mislabelled product.

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Agreed. My point is the trust issue. Of course we should be informed consumers, but expecting even a sushi affacianado to know all the many, many variations of fish species, and their various marketing names is unreasonable. (Unless your are @BradFord, of course. :wink: )

I agree and that is why the onus is on restaurants and purveyors to educate the public about their offerings as opposed to labelling fish in a way that is convenient for them to either sell more fish or a particular fish for more money or a higher perceived quality due to a more recognizable, but incorrect name.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Any expert recommendations for a first-rate sushi bar in Vancouver BC?

You missed the point of my post. I responded to a post that mentioned that origin and species are trivial and my whole point was that it’s ludicrous to say that origin and species do not matter, which is why I went into great detail about the differences between species of fish and origin. That’s the entire problem of mislabelling, isn’t it? Being accurate about the exact type of fish being served?

But, I will say, if you care about the fish you’re eating, you should do some research. A lot of errors made by Sushi chefs are simply because they’re translating from Japanese to English. I personally translate from Japanese to English every unfamiliar fish I’m served at any Sushi bar. Some Japanese names do not have common English translations. For example, there are various “Ika”, but Ika includes both squid and cuttlefish species and some do not have common US names. I also do that so I know what it is if it’s ever served to me again and I can see if it’s both similar in color, texture, grain and taste to what I had previously, because if it’s not, then I can ask why it’s different. It’s also not that hard. #GoogleFuThatShit

As I said, “Unless you’re a hardcore fish geek…”

Then he goes all hardcore fish geek on me :smiley:

You can’t post anything on this site with out some quibbler quibbling

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Well, if you’re gonna be a self-professed harcore fish geek, you better be correct, which you weren’t.