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America's appetite for sushi has grown insatiable, meanwhile fish populations continue to shrink. Some restaurants are already adapting, but to succeed, they'll have to get diners on board.
CAPTION: The Bagels-on-Hudson roll at Rosella in NYC IMAGE CREDIT: EMMA FISHMAN
Chef Jay Huang will never forget the day he took unagi off the menu at Lucky Robot Japanese Kitchen in Austin. “Several customers lashed out at us. They told me they'd never eat here again,” he says. “But it was a step we had to take.”
Huang had been searching for ways to source his sushi fish more sustainably instead of relying on whatever his large restaurant supplier imported. But unlike organic, the term sustainable has an elusiveness that prompts a dizzying number of questions, notably when it comes to seafood: Is the fish wild-caught or farmed? Does it come from nearby or oceans away? Is it even the same species the menu says it is?
Through careful questioning, Huang was able to find better alternatives for some species, but unagi had proved to be impossible. Nearly all of the world's eel supply is farmed, but because eels' breeding habits are so clouded in mystery, farms have had to source juvenile eels from a global supply chain rife with smuggling from overfished areas. Japanese and European wild eel populations are listed as endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
For a while Huang tried to prepare American catfish like unagi, seared and lacquered with sweet eel sauce, but diners were not persuaded. Some told Huang they wouldn't be back until the eel was too. He tried sourcing eels from American Unagi, a pioneering land-based aquaculture fishery raising sustainably managed wild American eels in Maine. But, Huang says, customers just weren't willing to pay more for a product they expected to be cheap.
From destination restaurants like Noma to chains such as Chipotle, the trend has been toward sourcing produce locally, offering plant-based alternatives and sometimes eliminating red meat altogether. But even decades into the farm-to-table movement, fish overnighted from the other side of the world remains a signal of quality at sushi restaurants across the U.S.
As we're forced to confront the realities of overfishing and climate change, America's sushi...