Full marks to KSHB-TV of Kansas City for a fine job of investigative reporting, showing that many restaurants in that city were (are?) defrauding their customers. A few excerpts from their report:
A NBC Action News investigation indicates the vast majority of Kansas City restaurants sampled in a 20 restaurant test were serving diners something other than what was promised on the menu.
The undercover video obtained during the NBC Action News investigation shows restaurant workers repeatedly identifying the fish served as what was labeled on the menu.
. . .
The investigation went undercover inside 20 metro restaurants.
We took samples from each restaurant and sent them to the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.
. . .
The Guy Harvey Research Institute’s DNA tests would reveal so much mislabeled fish, out of 20 Kansas City restaurants sampled, the tests indicate 17 restaurants – or 85 percent - substituted fish, most of them with cheaper counterfeits.
. . .
The Guy Harvey Research Institute said even some of the samples from Kansas City’s high priced restaurants failed to meet FDA labeling standards.
“It's a blue nose grouper,” the waiter at the Leawood Bristol is heard on undercover video when asked to describe the grouper there. “Very good.”
According to the FDA, bluenose is a real fish, but bluenose grouper doesn’t legally exist.
“There's the invoice there,” Philip Tumberger, the Bristol’s manager said pointing to a stack of invoices. “It's sold as grouper, blue nose.”
The restaurants supplier, Seattle Fish International, defended the restaurant’s menu description saying bluenose is a premium fish that wholesales at more expensive prices than real grouper.
“We do not believe this is in any way product substitution since we are selling it under the common name of New Zealand bluenose grouper,” said Scott Godke with Seattle Fish. “New Zealand bluenose, Hyperoglyphe Antartica, is a high end fish that is commonly referred to as bluenose, bluenose grouper and bluenose sea bass.”
The Bristol produced records showing Seattle Fish sold the restaurant the fish as “Grouper Blue Nose.”
DNA tests indicated the “Blue Nose Grouper” purchased at the Bristol isn’t even in the grouper family.
“The name 'bluenose' is used to market Hyperoglyphe Antarctica,” says FDA spokesperson Stephanie Kwisnek. “ It should not be used to market grouper, because it would be confusing to consumers.”
. . .
According to a Government Accounting Office report, “the specific species of fish or shellfish must be listed to notify consumers with food allergies of a particular type of fish species.”
There's a lot more at the link. Recommended reading - particularly to see the restaurant owners and managers squirm, duck and dive when confronted with the evidence of their dishonesty! I'm certainly going to look askance upon any fish offered in KC restaurants when next I visit the area.
I hope legal action will be taken against the offending establishments. I don't like being defrauded, and I'm sure their regular clients feel the same.
As a matter of interest, are any readers familiar with similar investigations into restaurants in their area? If so, please let us know about them in Comments, including a link if possible. I'm sure we'd all like to be forewarned about potential dining problems in places we might visit.
Peter
8 comments:
This is why I only order seafood when I'm home in Virginia Beach. The few restaurants I trust, I can see the boat that caught the fish I'm eating and occasionally I can even see it still wiggling before they prepare it. (Mmmm, soft shelled crab...)
This is sadly pretty common, and why, like the previous commenter, I won't eat in a lot of seafood restaurants. Part of the problem is that the people selling the fish out of the water aren't always honest, part of it is that there really ARE a huge array of common names that are sometimes misleading for a lot of fish species, and part of it is just plain defrauding diners to save a buck because they know a lot of people don't have the palate to distinguish one bit of seafood from another.
Here's a hint- if you've ever been served "scallops" that are big, puffy, and all perfectly circular and the same size... that wasn't scallop. Stamped out fish of varying species with white flesh. If you get these, don't trust the seafood at that restaurant.
Ditto here- I don't see the fish, I don't eat the fish... Lots of "scallops" are cut out of shark meat too.
I've heard of this sort of thig before; the fraud could be at the wholesaler, or they could be honest and the restaurant is the one who is, ahem, "mislabeling" the fish.
And as the previous posters said: don't order fish unless you're at the waterfront.
I don't know anything about seafood. The Bristol is one of the top restaurants in KC.
I'm much more likely to be suspicious of anything remotely labeled as fact by KSHB-TV. All the stations appear to have learned journalism from the Barney Frank School of Economics.
Interesting that the analysis was done here in Florida. The same "scandal" occurred here a year or two ago and our state lawmakers were found to be eating the same mislabled stuff in the capitol food establishment, too.
Did you know the folks in a Seattle fish market get kinda bitchy when a group of people walk in and loudly (with great amusement) point out to each other that the "fresh fish" they're selling hasn't had an open season for eight months?
Said group was just being amused at the idiocy! Who'da thunk that they'd try to get pushy and "you don't know what you're talking about!" Of course, pulling that with Alaskan longliners was... not their smartest move...
Yeah, I'm not sure I could trust any fish source that far away from the ocean. It just doesn't seem right.
I grew up in Edmonds, Washington. We caught our own crab. Picked mussels off o the rocks and steamed them for dinner.
Now I live in Phoenix, a desert town. People here will believe anything at all about seafood. Once I saw, in the supermarket, a fish wrapped in plastic so that you can't smell it. Good move, because the funk would surely have gave away its distance from the ocean. Its eyes dull and sunken in, the butcher came over to find out why I was prodding its flesh with my finger--the flesh that wouldn't rebound. The flesh right next to the big, orange sticker that proudly proclaimed, "Fresh!"
"Just how fresh is this fish?"
"Oh, it's fresh, sir!"
"How fresh?"
"Very fresh."
"We're hundreds of miles from any ocean. How is that possible?"
"Well..."
"I mean, we're in a desert, and it's summer, and you think it would have rotted on the truck between the ocean and here, wouldn't you. It's quite a miracle that it's here in your market, still fresh after that journey. What it is, five hours by truck from San Diego?"
"Well..."
"And is there even a fishery for this kind of fish in San Diego? I don't think there is. I wonder where it came from..."
"I think it was frozen."
"What?"
"I think it was frozen where it was caught, shipped here, and then we thawed it."
"You're kidding."
"No, that's how we get them."
"So... what's with that sticker?"
"What sticker?"
"That one there, 'Fresh.' "
"Oh. It was 'Fresh frozen.' "
"Fresh... frozen..."
"Right."
Let's hear it for fresh frozen." Much better than letting them sit in the sun for a while before slapping them down on a block of ice.
And the crab sold in the market here have all been cooked and frozen at the source before being shipped. They bear no relationship at all to a fresh crab dropped in the pot while still alive. The two look the same, but they do not taste the same.
Post a Comment