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Had lunch yesterday at the lovely Oceanaire in DC. On the recommendation of a certain South Dakotan, I ordered the blue fin tuna, done up sashimi style, with wasabi and soy. Meh. Ten slightly watery cuts of ruby red fish arrayed on the plate. A better piece of fish could have stood up to that solo engagement. This tuna -- increasingly, all tuna we get in America -- could not. The reasons are well explained in this article. Massive demand leading to overfishing compounded by a newly global tuna market that's dominated by Japan. And let's not get into the mercury question. Point is, we get bad fish, farmed or caught in a totally unsustainable manner. But could the wonderfish change all that?
So just what is Kona Kampachi? Think of it as a more versatile cousin of hamachi. It's not genetically engineered in any way, just well bred. It's sashimi-grade and sustainably farmed without hormones or prophylactic antibiotics. It's richer in omega-3 than just about anything else in the ocean and has no detectable mercury. It melts on your tongue, holds up on the grill, and is so rich in oils that it'll fry in a pan without butter.Pregnant women, nursing moms, young children: Eat as much as you want of what might just be the best-tasting fish you've ever had. Really. It's that good.Kona Blue calls its designer yellowtail the "fish of the future." In truth, it's more like a fish of the past. After all, sea life wasn't always scarce or poisonous. But the cultivation does involve scientific and technological advancements.Could this be sustainable aquaculture? No one seems sure if it can move to scale. But it seems possible. And it has to be better than the tuna.
