Hard pass. Quality over quantity, I say.
In fact I worry about them baby fish being overharvested for the cheap AYCE before they have a chance to reproduce. Pretty disheartened to imagine that our grandkids or their kids may not get a chance to experience wild-caught seafood.
Uh try anyone still alive in 20-30 years!
This is probably the wrong forum for this type of dining. Prob better off sticking to Yelp, Tiktok, or Instagram.
I could stand to hear a little more
Stand to hear a little more about AYCE sushi places sourcing non-sustainable fish or more about AYCE sushi places in general?
TBH, I could probably use both… ::hanging my head shamefully::
The two restaurants I know in LA that commit to using only sustainable fish: Providence and Connie & Ted’s.
Are there others?
alternate take - please stop eating so much AYCE cheap sushi. It’s bad for the ocean, bad for the future of any fish, and not so bueno for your overall heavy metal intake & health.
SM Seafood? I didn’t read all of this:
https://santamonicaseafood.com/sustainability
pretty much this. The proliferation of cheap sushi benefits nobody. Most cheap sushi uses shit quality fish which has no taste, there’s of course farmed salmon which all basic diners like because it has so much fat same with farmed kanpachi/hamachi.
If you can’t really taste the fish, then what are you tasting? Usually its just soy sauce and wasabi which most people tend to use too much of.
If this was fish that was going to be wasted and cheap sushi was a way to salvage it then I would be all for it but it exacerbates the problem of overfishing. You may say I’m elitist for saying that poor people shouldn’t be eating sushi but access to sushi is a privilege not a basic human right. Is it wrong to say people should learn how to savor quality fish and have it less frequently especially if we are going to deplete it for future generations?
So yeah AYCE, I have no recs because I haven’t been to one in over a decade.
This is true and all, but I stay seeing bluefin on the FTC board so it’s not like the high end is without sin
Just because many of us diners pay more at sushi restaurants of note do we actually know if that fish is sustainable or caught in a sustainable manner?
I’ve been to many of the “good” places in town but I have no idea how they get their fish, their sourcing, and the environmental effects of the method in fishing that particular species.
I think it’s fair to point out issues with sushi buffets as whole but attacking one persons dining habits seems a bit harsh given that we all likely have some level of culpability in decimating fish populations for our own enjoyment and to the detriment of future generations.
General rule: if a restaurant makes no claims about its fish being sustainable, it’s not.
Easy way to check: if they have unagi, they’re not sourcing exclusively sustainable.
An expensive sushi place may be worse than the cheapest if it sources rare, highly endangered species such as bluefin rather than just buying what’s cheap and easily available.
No but how many tons of fish do high end sushi restaurants go thru vs commodity? One has probably a worse impact on the environment compared to the others. The pressure to serve cheap bluefin is probably the worst thing for the environment due to the special nature of the fish at the top of its foodchain, without them the the whole system will collapse.
Sure I eat bluefin once in awhile but if anything I probably can count on one hand how many times a year I might eat it. At the end of the day we need less people eating large fish. If conveyor belt and AYCE sushi places could satisfy customer demand by only serving small oily fish then we’d probably be in a better place but lower income diners these days are use to eating bigger fish and that’s the issue because sushi has become so ubiquitous, especially in China and as its global popularity increases something will have to give. Either way the outcome will probably be that price of fish gets too high for casual places because supply is gonna run out so either we make the choice now or the choice gets made for us.
There’s no such thing.
fine, more reasonably priced affordable bluefin.
“Affordable” bluefin is probably a mislabeled cheaper fish.
whatever thats not the point
I’m missing your point.
Not worth the effort explaining to you
I’ve had this debate in the past. It’s definitely an elitist view… Pretty easy to see why someone who can’t afford high end sushi could care less about preserving access to sushi for future generations. They just want to eat whatever sushi they can afford.