Apologies if this has already been brought up elsewhere, but a recent study/report names names with some FTC favourites implicated with very high mislabeling on the species tested: Kiriko (3/5 mislabeled), Sushi Sushi (4/5 mislabeled). Wonder if the situation is better or worse with more esoteric fish.
Thereâs more than one side to every story. Here is a business ownerâs side:
Ken-san from Kiriko has publicly posted the following reply on Kirikoâs Facebook page:
"Dear our friends & customers.
I saw Hollywood reporter article. They said weâre one of the most mislabeled ( fish name ) sushi menu in the town. I hope you know that we donât have any maliciousness to call red snapper for Japanese sea bream, halibut for east coast fluke or flounder, golden eye snapper for alfonsino, sweet shrimp for spot prawn, and many more items. We wanted to use names are popular for customers in Los Angelse.
For example, We all know that soft shell crabâs real name is a blue crab. After the molting,their new shell become soft. So they call a soft shell crab. Is this mislabeling too ???
I attended the sea food traceability forum at LMU campus in April. Thereâre people from FDA, Health Dpt. , local fisheries, UCLA and LMU whoâre concerned about this matter.I was sad and very surprised that I was only person from restaurant industry ( Iâm not talking about Japanese restaurant, I mean entire restaurants business society of whole city ). At end of free discussion, Obviously I was asked many questions to answer. Escolar=white tuna, Izumi Tai=tirapia. Is frozen mushed tuna are real tuna ? kind a things. I couldnât give good answers for those questions, because we donât use them.
We didnât conclude meeting in 3 or4 hours, but we agree to work and improve with all of us, FDA, state and local government, fishermen, whole seller and restaurants ( includes retailers ).
why now, people try to point fingers each other instead of making things better together. Iâll continue to work with their forum.
If you want to know what I really am buying, come join my purchasing at IMP and OCEAN FRESH Tuesday and Friday around 6-7:30 am
Thank you and I see you at sushi bar
Ken Namba"
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Yes, it does seem that in many of these cases âmislabelingâ is likely a case of using recognizable names for similarâish if not always biologically related fish. Though itâs hard to see how Pacific mackerel turns into âred snapperâ. The mislabeling is likely more in the direction of fraud at non-sushi places where a diner may in fact be looking for halibut rather than hirame whose English name is given as halibut.
That said, in more cases than weâd like to be the case we are, to paraphrase a character in The Limey, probably standing on faith.
Kohada is kohada. For those of us who take our sushi seriously, take the time and learn the original Japanese term for those critters. Stop expecting the itamae to bend over backwards in his/her own house to accurately translate it into the closest Basque cognate.
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Sure. But itâs also not too much to ask of sushi bars that they might consider putting more accurate English fish names on their printed menus when they provide them. Nor is it too much to ask of a chef to say âJapanese sea bream, like snapperâ, instead of just âsnapperâ when a less experienced person wants to know the English name.
Of course, if your view of eating sushi is that it is an expensive hazing ritual then you may disagree: all the work is to be done by diners. Somehow we donât expect this of any other high-end dining.
Maybe the use of the biologically assigned Latin genus and species of the seafood may help solve a lot of these issues. I wish the best of luck to the chef trying to say âOdontodactylus scyllarusâ instead of âshakoâ during a busy dinner service.
Sushi is uniquely Japanese in origin. And yes - itâs also a uniquely Japanese thing to expect the serious diner to do their homework before taking a seat at the bar. Some would view upon this ritual of expectations between the chef and the customer as mutual respect, not hazing.
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What does this have to do with sushi bars giving people the wrong or inexact name of a fish, often unprompted? Is that also a uniquely Japanese thing?
More often than not, the inexactness doesnât come from a place of malice or intentional deception on the part of the chef. In my experience itâs more often that itâs actually a language barrier which results in the incorrect label or misnaming of fish. But I guess itâs true that the journalists have an obligation to report all misdeeds, whether intentional or not.
Yes, I agree with you, as stated above. But, as I also said, itâs not a very hard problem for sushi bars to overcome: âhirame, like halibutâ is not a much harder formulation than just âhalibutââthe only other English word there is âlikeâ.
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Our sushi chefs will all soon talk like Valley Girls. (âLike, OMG!â), at their lawyerâs behest⌠
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I think you have too low an opinion of the language abilities of Los Angelesâ sushi chefs.
No joke - you have a good solution to the issue. Even the English-adept itamae would find it acceptable and easy to use to avoid more articles like this one coming out.
SAAM is definately a high end restaurant but definitely not a sushi restaurant. So I am not sure if this comment fit in this thread.
At SAAM, typically, each course is presented with a recitation of a commentary of the dish such as the ingredients and method of preparation etc.
I once had a truffle steamed cod "en papillote"at SAAM. I was curious as to whether the cod was Atlantic cod (aka Alaska cod or true cod), Pacific cod, ling cod, black cod, rock cod or some other exotic species. So I ask my server to inquire about the origin of the fish and carefully specified each of the five likely cod candidates. The server dutifully went to the kitchen and asked the chef, came back and reply that they did not know what kind of cod they were serving.
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would it be considered rude, upon being served a piece of fish at the sushi bar, to ask,
âwhat is the japanese name of this fish, please?â
is there a better way to ask?
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 itâs 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, âWhatâs the Japanese name of this fish?â), 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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Thatâs 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 Iâve read, some of the Japanese words used at sushi bars (e.g. hirame) arenât species-specific.
- Fish flown in from Japan may have no English common name since theyâre 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 donât have precise Japanese names because theyâre 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 âproblemâ exists.
I put that in quotes because itâs really not much of a problem at all. Iâm 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, heâs 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 âhalibut,â for example, is more properly called a flounder, as it in the Paralychthis genus, not Hippoglossus. But we ainât 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 â the very thick fillets. Not so great for sushi. So I see no issue with labeling the fish halibut, if thatâs the name that best matches the fish the consumer expects to eat.
I see no problem also with calling the NZ snapper a snapper. Itâs what weâd call a bream, but we donât really have anything like it in the states. In NZ, everyone calls it a snapper. I donât see how itâs fish mislabeling. Itâs not an inferior product, itâs not an objectively incorrect name, and itâs what someone in the know about sushi expects when they order snapper because itâs a very similar fish analogue to what they call madai (âtrue snapperâ) in Japan.
@Bookwich mentioned the yellowtail being mislabeled, but they donât say what it is. I found that curious too, especially since in the graphic at the bottom, the silhouette next to âyellowtailâ is a yellowtail snapper â what they call âyellowtailâ 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 â Seriola lalandi. Our CA subspecies is S. lalandi dorsalis. The one from Japan is a ridiculously closely related fish, S. quinqueradiata. Itâs also what they farm in Hawaiâi under the âhamachiâ brand. Itâs much fattier, and IMO, much better (although I eat plenty of local YT, happily.) If I see hamachi or buri, I expect this. But itâs simply not objectively wrong to call them all yellowtail, or even buri. Theyâre analogous. Just like fluke, CA halibut, and âolive flounderâ are analogous. Just like madai and NZ snapper are analogous.
Some funny asides: one manâs trash is another manâs treasure, and thatâs 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 
) For example, we have a fish called an opaleye that is pretty much unanimously regarded as just terrible. Most of the chubs (thatâs the family itâs in) around the world are considered terrible by locals. But when an LA food critic eats mejina, the incredibly close analogue from Japan, he doesnât seem to think itâs inferior.
Second aside, thereâs no such thing as âwhite tuna,â so any claim that itâs a misrepresentation is just illogical. Albacore is the only tuna that can be sold as âwhite meat tuna,â i.e., with that on the can.
White meat tuna isnât the same thing as white tuna. Nobody anywhere calls albies âwhite tuna.â Except kind of in Japan, where itâs sometimes called âshiro maguro,â which translates to white tuna, but more commonly for sushi itâs called binnaga anyway. When I see white tuna, I expect escolar, because thatâs the only thing I ever really see called âwhite tuna.â If they used escolar and called it albacore, thatâd be misrepresentation because thatâs a screwy label for escolar â âwhite tunaâ isnât.
Basically, this boils down to two things: screwy local common names, and accepted market names.
Unless we start using scientific names for fish, you arenât going to know the exact species youâre eating most of the time, especially when it comes to a name like âsnapperâ thatâs widely used around the world for many different genera of fish. But the kicker is, like the opaleye/mejina/kevineats example shows, most people donât really know much about what fish theyâre eating anyway. So the mislabeling âproblem,â 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 youâre 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, itâs pretty clear they grabbed an order of mackerel and by someoneâs mistake put it in the âsnapperâ box. And that fish conservation guy who said fluke and halibut were âvastly different,â and made that analogy with crab/fake crab, is a complete idiot.
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This.
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