I’ve seen articles like this for almost 20 years now. But I haven’t heard anyone complaining about it. Basically, they are saying that many sushi restaurants are passing off lesser quality fish as the more expensive kind. Anyone ever noticed this before?
[https://www.thedailymeal.com/1171706/the-sushi-you-love-might-not-be-what-you-think-it-is/](https://www.thedailymeal.com/1171706/the-sushi-you-love-might-not-be-what-you-think-it-is/)
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All the time. Literally all the time.
edit: I’m in the USA
Your “snapper” is almost always tilapia (this infuriates me, at least have the decent to call it whitefish)
Some people pass ocean trout and another (forgot the species) as salmon.
I’ve seen questionable cuts of toro/chu-toro
Escolar is often mis named various things.
Fluke, founder, grouper and other similar fish are often confused or convoluted
Basically cheap chefs will mislabel lower cuts of fish as higher quality ones. It’s shady as fuck and you should avoid these places. They’re usually the kind of places that reuse bamboo leafs and other garnishes off plates. They often use day old rice, fish past peak freshness, all their kitchen food is premade frozen stuff they heat up and so on..
If you’re visiting a low cost sushi place 99% of the time “snapper” is tilapia. White tuna is often escolar. Tuna is whatever frozen cuts rejected from ALDIS. Salmon is the hardest to fake or skimp on, as non Atlantic cheap salmons like pink or chum are very noticeably not Atlantic salmon because of their lack of fat.
Most “maguro” is big eye. And there’s no need to fake Atlantic salmon because it’s already dirt cheap.
If you’ve ever seen a Talapia farm you’ll never eat “snapper” again.
“White tuna” that I suspect isn’t always white tuna
You can’t fool me with salmon, snapper, tuna, and shrimp
I found a restaurant selling “lobster” fried rice and lo mein using crawfish. I also found “super white tuna” that was actually escolar.
Depends on the restaurant. The less you’re paying relatively, the higher the chance there is of less serving for greater. Legit places are receiving fish all the time, so it’s not universal. The skill gap between cheap places and high end places means that a lot of cheaper ones are using vacuum sealed filets with less variety, so if there’s only tuna salmon and yellowtail, those are probably accurate. Not necessarily high quality, but not worth faking. It’s really white fish that are so notoriously swappable for unseasoned palates.
A lot of fish in general is mislabeled. Like 40% or something like that.
Where I am escolar is sometimes called “butterfish” or “oilfish”.
Not fish, but as a tobiko fanatic it always irritates me how much of it is actually just masago.
One that nobody has said yet is unagi/anago. At least where I’m at some of the lower end places will list it as unagi but use anago due to costs.
Escolar (white tuna) is the Olestra of the fish world.
Honestly, wouldn’t surprise me.
Its like wine, unless you know you don’t know. If I corked a $15 bottle of wine and a $1000 bottle of wine, most people would have to guess on which one is better.
Same problem with seafood in most any restaurant or supermarket. Tens of billions of dollars are made misrepresenting seafood, it’s expensive and tedious to catch the parties responsible. Everybody’s got an upstream supplier to blame. People complain, but it doesn’t change anything. An average consumer might be looking at a couple years and tens of thousands of dollars in testing, international legal fees, and expert witnesses to win $2.19 in compensatory damages for a misrepresented bite of sushi.