Which is better...??

[k001k47]

I'm all out of tuna, so I vote tuner, sir.

[windshieldbug]

In my experience, tuna are almost always flat...

but tuners taste a lot like matzo...

[Uncle Buck]

I'm never gonna get that smell off the fish . . .

[Mark E. Chachich]

the tuna has more scales.

[Kevin Hendrick]

Oh, four tuners ... if I have to ... I guess ...

[Tom Mason]

Joe,

Nothing against you personally, but I have learned not to trust some Memfus people in being able to correctly identify the fish in front of them........

I had a jazz quartet gig in an art gallery in the Beale Street area 5 or 6 years ago that ended up serving a nice spread of various treats. As the drummer and I were partaking if the spread during a break, two wealthy looking patrons commented to each other aboiut how well the salmon tasted. When the left the area, I looked at the head and body of the fish, and told the drummer that it mat be the best salmon they tasted, but it was only a fair tuna in my opinion. He told me that he had tasted better tuna from a can.

[tofu]

Joe,

Nothing against you personally, but I have learned not to trust some Memfus people in being able to correctly identify the fish in front of them........

I had a jazz quartet gig in an art gallery in the Beale Street area 5 or 6 years ago that ended up serving a nice spread of various treats. As the drummer and I were partaking if the spread during a break, two wealthy looking patrons commented to each other aboiut how well the salmon tasted. When the left the area, I looked at the head and body of the fish, and told the drummer that it mat be the best salmon they tasted, but it was only a fair tuna in my opinion. He told me that he had tasted better tuna from a can.

Couple months ago on the news they talked about the results of a survey of a large number of restaurants. I was stunned when they said that 24% of the fish served by restaurants was mislabeled. It was even worse for sushi.

[Donn]

I just don't eat "sushi" at restaurants (no matter how highly recommended) for a couple of reasons.

- I have no idea how long it's been sitting out.

- the pricing: HOW much for a fingernail-sized piece of uncooked fish, a spoonful of rice, a tiny sliver of cucumber, and a piece of seaweed...!?!?

You might not be in the nation's hot spot for sushi dining anyway.

We indulge occasionally. The nearby kaiten style place - parade of dishes with clear plastic covers on a conveyor belt around the restaurant - comes out more or less in the middle of local restaurant meal costs, given maybe a half dozen items each and some sake or tea or something. Fancier places cost more. Along with the kaiten system, and the usual waited table business, you can often sit at the "bar" and have stuff made up for you as you go along, either at your request or the chef's choice. That can be great, or the kaiten system gives you a similar as-you-go chance to take what might look good; the conventional table & menu way is the hard way to eat sushi, for me, unless you're kind of on your own and you can just order a chirashi bowl or something.

You can actually watch the prep and get some idea how long things are sitting out - at least, as much as with any restaurant. It's safe as could be. It's one of the relatively few things I like to eat that I can't easily make myself - I mean, I can make sushi, but have no way to economically assemble little bits of one thing and another, so I just make a huge heap of one thing, which somewhat misses the point of sushi. Of course, you don't have to like sushi, but as usual that's your problem and not an indication that your penetrating insights have seen through the foolishness that others are snared in.

I have a little trouble imagining how people could mistake some of the fish species substitutions the article mentioned. I've never seen escolar, though (that I knew of), maybe it's more like tuna than I think. But I thought they were kind of stacking the results by complaining about things like red snapper, orange roughy, whatever -- I'm not not sure there's any point in the distinction, other than taxonomic correctness for its own sake.

[tofu]

I'm simply stunned to find out that Bloke is not a Sushi fanatic.

I finished a big investment banking IPO and the client insisted on taking me to a very fancy Sushi place to celebrate - I resisted but the client insisted there would be something else I could eat there. So we go and client orders big sushi spread and I ordered baked salmon. Client for the whole evening kept trying to get me to try the sushi which I refused.

Of the party of eight - 7 got food poisoning - 3 severe enough to be admitted to the hospital and I got on a plane and flew home - glad to have refused the sushi!

It's one of those "in" dishes that many people indulge in not because they like it - but to be seen as hip. It's usually overpriced and poorly prepared.

I'm a tuba player - so neither hip nor trying to be by definition.

[Donn]

I'm a saxophone player, that must be it! Or it could be, again, a regional difference. There are half a dozen good sushi options within a 15 minute walk from my humble abode, so the competition is pretty rigorous. (I don't think anyone completely understands why so many right around here, but any similar neighborhood in the city likely have at least a couple places. Other Pacific coast cities like Vancouver & Victoria BC, Portland, San Francisco, I'd expect as good or better.)

Without pulling up anything for cross reference, the menu copied above looks typical enough to me for pricing. The question is, at the end of the evening, how much did you pay for a satisfactory meal? I suppose there's no industry standard for size of a nigiri sushi, so the "fingernail" size piece of fish could be a reality, or you could get one so big that two make a meal. I've had economical sushi dinners. The difference is - well, maybe they don't pay as much for the top quality ingredients, but I think really it's how fancy they get. If you want the top regional sushi chefs, the menu full of fancy and distinctive items, the tasteful decor etc., you'll pay a premium price, and that's really what people are often looking for when they go out for sushi. That menu is a fancy treatment at least inasmuch as it offers a lot of extras, like sea eel in addition to the much more common fresh water eel (unagi.) If you go to the place in the strip mall that looks like it could have been repurposed from a donut shop, the modest selection of raw fish could very well taste the same, for of course fewer bucks.

A few types of fish really are at their best raw. Tuna in particular, and of course it's a staple sushi ingredient, which is where we came in. To skip the sushi thing and go straight for the raw tuna, you may be able to find fairly high quality albacore "fillets" in the freezer section. Thaw it out, cut it up into chunks and season lightly with some soy sauce and green onions or something, for Hawaiian poke. Or the fancy restaurants around here like to sear the fillet whole, just 1/8 deep, then cut into thin sections that are of course mostly raw. Or cut into strips, salt and pepper, sear in olive oil in frying pan. Just don't let the stuff cook, it gets dry and chewy.

Other fish even the Japanese won't eat raw. Well, never been to Japan, but around here mackerel (saba) is always cooked. Not sure how - it retains kind of a similar to raw texture, but the taste is not raw, more like pickled? I love that stuff. Shrimp is commonly cooked, octopus, eel is always cooked.

Yet even though most fish, apart from tuna, arguably benefit from cooking, sushi really is about raw fish. If I get a chirashi bowl, I expect a handful of different raw fish varieties in there. Even though I wouldn't care to sit down to a big plate of any of them alone (say, raw salmon for example), the combination can add up to something pretty sublime.

[MikeW]

"sushi is about raw fish" reminds me of a comment from a guy I was working with a few years ago;
He was from Newfoundland, where fishing has always been a major industry so they're aware of the various parasites transmitted by raw fish. He summed up his family's attitude to Sushi -

"We like our raw fish deep fried"

Eat the cooked stuff, like California Roll: At least you can be sure it won't eat you back.

[Donn]

Since you're somewhat local, drop into to Ginger Sushi on Commercial Drive some time, it's a great example of the more economical places I was talking about. Won't bite.