If you want to know more about this delicious fish, that you really shouldn’t eat, you can read it at this link: Escolar – Wikipedia
We’ve carried this fish occasionally, and eaten it ourselves here and as “White Tuna” at other restaurants, and it’s so delicious and popular, you’d never imagine that it could make you sick, but it can. Not lethally, and not everybody, but you can be uncomfortable for a period of time for sure.
It’s getting harder and harder to find fish that you can feel good about serving. We stopped carrying shrimp a long time ago; now we get it only when it’s from a sustainable, good practice, American farm. That’s it. No Thai shrimp, no trawled shrimp, no way. Mercury is a big issue, overfishing is a big issue, unhealthy fish farming practices is a big issue. Oil spills? other environmental degradation? You really have to think before you buy. We are able to get sustainably farmed salmon, but even that is shifting now and we’ve had to change companies because we lost trust in our former “Organic and Sustainable” fish company. Line-caught Massachusetts Cod has been very good and reliable, as has Mediterranean Bronzini.
High-end restaurants like our favorite, Le Bernardin, charge a tremendous amount of money and serve fantastic fish, but that’s what you have to do these days more and more. With all of the problems out there in the sea, it’s not obvious for people who can’t afford to spend that kind of money every time that they want to eat fish. And it’s a shame when a fish that is so consistently fresh and delicious as escolar turns out to be, quite apart from all of these external factors, not, in fact, a good eating fish after all. We really wanted everyone to know about the situation.
