Pick up a copy of the November issue of San Francisco Magazine now on newsstands to read my short piece on three new sustainable sushi guides.
A year in the works, the guides were put together by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Blue Ocean Institute, and the Environmental Defense Fund.
On each of the organization’s Web sites, you’ll find a copy of a free guide to download. All three are sure to make your next meal at a sushi bar more enlightening.
That is just what Tataki Sushi & Sake Bar in San Francisco is believed to be.
The tiny, seven-month-old restaurant serves only seafood that isn’t overfished, farmed without proper management, or contains high levels of mercury and other contaminants.
Find out more about why business partners, Chef Kin Lui, Chef Raymond Ho, and Casson Trenor (a sustainable fisheries expert) decided to open such a restaurant by reading my story today in the San Francisco Chronicle Food section.
Tataki, the site of a former Subway sandwich shop, grabs your attention right when you walk in. A Monterey Bay Aquarium “Seafood Watch” pocket guide, which lists best and worst sustainable seafood species, is front and center on every table. A copy is also tucked into every take-out menu.
Oct. 22, Tataki will be the site of the official launch of three new, ground-breaking sustainable sushi guides created in partnership with the aquarium, Blue Ocean Institute, and Environmental Defense Fund. Each will include information on as many as 60 different seafood species commonly found on sushi menus.
Want to do the right thing? Then, you’ll stop eating unagi, bluefin toro, hamachi, octopus (tako), monkfish liver (ankimo), farmed salmon (sake), imported King crab (kani), imported albacore tuna (shiro maguro), and sea urchin (uni) from Maine — all of which are unsustainable, according to the aquarium’s new guide.
Having been born and raised in San Francisco, I’m a big-city girl. I sheepishly concede that really shows sometimes, too.
When I was a summer intern at the Portland Oregonian newspaper way back when, my editors sent me to the county fair to write a story. Any story.
When I arrived, I noticed the dairy cow competition was about to begin. Admittedly, growing up in cramped, congested San Francisco, I never even lived anywhere that had room for grass in the yard. Not surprisingly, my experience with cows was limited to seeing them grazing off in the distance as I rode in a car on the freeway. Getting up close and personal with one was novel, to be sure.
I walked up to a young man at the fair, who was tending his cows. “Excuse me, Sir?” I asked. “Are you in the dairy cow competition?”
The young man looked at me, looked at his cows, then looked at me again: “Ma’am, these are beef cows.”
Ohhh, right. The cows were dark as coal, muscular, and rather hefty, I realized on second glance, as I slinked off in complete shame.
So it goes without saying that I grew up getting my eggs from supermarkets, too. Sure, I’d read and heard people say that farm-fresh eggs were so much better. But I had been content to take the easy route, just picking up a carton of 12 on my regular trips to the grocery store.
But a few weeks ago, my husband’s co-worker, who raises chickens, gave us two dozen of his farm-fresh eggs. They were about two days old, with shells that ranged in hue from alabaster to biscuit to bronze.
My husband, who also had never experienced fresh eggs, was eager to try them, too. The next morning, he cracked two open for sunny-side up eggs with toast. The difference was immediately apparent. The yolks were orange, not the standard yellow. Some say the more vivid color is due to the chickens being less stressed; others say it’s because farmers feed marigolds to the poultry to purposely attain that color in the eggs. And still others say the color comes from the farm chicken’s natural diet of grains, leaves and bugs, in contrast to the commercial chicken, which is usually fed soy and fish meals.
With the price of everything on the rise, we’re all tempted to cut back on buying organics and wild seafood, which can put a big dent in the pocketbook.
But there’s a way to still enjoy all of that — and eat it, too.
The key is to choose wisely. That’s the message in my latest posting on the Slow Food Nation blog, which gives tips and advice on eating right in these economically challenging times.
We’ve been conditioned to stay away from most farmed seafood — and for good reason.
But there are some types that have won over critics. Read my primer that I wrote for the Slow Food Nation blog.
Slow Food Nation is a mega-event that takes place Aug. 29 to Sept. 1 in San Francisco. It will feature a marketplace, speakers’ forum, panel discussions, and dinners — all revolving around the celebration and continued fostering of sustainable food around the world.