Seafood restaurants fight confusion over menu items

The word is out: Fish – rich in omega-3 fatty acids and lean protein – is good for you. Eat it often.

Except if it is a species identified as containing dangerously high levels of mercury, PCBs or other toxins from fertilizer runoffs and other pollutants in the nation’s oceans and rivers. Or if it has a bill on it, is an Atlantic flatfish (but not a Pacific one), is farmed, is not farmed, is overfished or caught in environmentally unsound ways.

“Then you add in the confusion of what fish are called,´ said Mike Reeves, owner of Fish restaurant in Old Town Fort Collins. “The Chilean sea bass is a marketing name for the Patagonian toothfish. And orange roughy is a much more attractive name than ‘slimehead.'”

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As a result, it is sometimes difficult for a diner to understand that the orange roughy is overfished while sustainable Chilean sea bass comes from the South Georgia Patagonian Toothfish Longline Fishery. And years ago, restaurateurs learned that it is better to call Coryphaena hippurus by its Hawaiian name mahi-mahi (strong-strong) than by its other common name “dolphin fish.” Flipper the mammal is absolutely out of bounds.

Beyond the simple confusions, seafood restaurants – big national chains like Bonefish Grill and Red Lobster and small locally owned spots like Fish and Okole Maluna in Windsor – must be concerned that fishing is a hard industry to regulate. There are no organic standards for seafood in the United States.

The federal Food and Drug Administration maintains HACCP (for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) to inspect domestic seafood processors. However, the majority of all seafood consumed in the United States is imported from approximately 159 countries, a number of which do not have advanced mandatory regulatory systems. The FDA’s inspection of imported seafood can determine if it is misbranded or decomposed, but nothing about how it was caught or farmed.

“We have our own very strict standards,´ said Ryan McDonough, beverage and hospitality manager for the Red Lobster in Fort Collins. “Our purchase department in Orlando, Fla., reacts very quickly to changes in seafood. We canceled swordfish because of the mercury health alert. We probably won’t be serving swordfish again.”

On any given day, four to six different fish will appear on a Red Lobster menu chosen from the 12 to 15 fish on the basic list that may be only available on a seasonable basis.

“We have trout, tilapia, salmon, ono (wahoo), cod, mahi-mahi, walleye and rockfish,” McDonough said. “With something like 680 locations, we are one of the largest buyers of seafood in the country, and so we can negotiate for the ‘top of the catch,’ those fish that were caught last and have spent the least time on the boat.”

With something like 150 locations, Bonefish Grill can also leverage its scale with the fisheries.

“We try to get the best fish possible,´ said Andrew Cowan, front-of-the-house manager for the Bonefish in Johnstown. “We inspect everything that comes in before it gets delivered to the individual restaurants and send our buyers to look at the fisheries first-hand.”

In fact, the Web site for Bonefish puts the company’s fish buyers front and center. Bruce Lee (no relation to the late martial artist) is featured as a “fish guru” in four mini-films. In them he describes a day in the life of a fish buyer, which begins early in the morning with a check of the weather around the fisheries. The enigmatic “RN” posts a running travelogue on his fishery quest through the Mediterranean, Caribbean and North Atlantic, where he demystifies Artic char.

It would seem that the national chains have an unfair advantage over small restaurants that specialize in or feature fresh fish. However, for Northern Colorado, the big fishmongers in Denver and elsewhere do much to ensure smooth sailing.

“I use Northeast Seafood and Seattle Fish Co. in Denver, and then some others like the Pacific Harvest Seafoods and Honolulu Fish Co., which specializes in wild-caught fish,” Reeves said.

The Web sites for those four suppliers rival what the big chains can offer. Each provides an extensive mini-course in seafood and seafood preparation. Reeves added that the fishmongers offer many types of fish that he does not buy for his own reasons.

“I don’t buy billfish, and I only get fish from areas that are heavily managed like Alaska, where I get my halibut, cod and salmon,” he said. “Interestingly, the best farm-raised fish is inland where it can be managed and not contaminate adjacent waters. All our trout comes from Idaho.”

In Reeves’ view, a restaurant must choose the seafood it offers with sustainability in mind.

“The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s link to SeafoodWatch provides a great rule of thumb for choosing fish,” he said. “But sometimes a fish appears on the ‘avoid’ list because of the techniques used to catch it and not because it is endangered or threatened. And from all the medical reports, it is better to eat some fish every week than none at all.”

Andy Higa, who with his wife Juliet owns and runs Okole Maluna, is from Hawaii where a ready supply of seafood is always at hand. In landlocked Colorado he, like Reeves, depends on a distributor he trusts to be careful.

“The distributor gives us a certificate of the boat and where the fish were caught,” Higa said. “We get salmon, mahi, ono, and hapu`upu`u, a Hawaiian sea bass. I’m also introducing monchong. It’s a real buttery fish that I serve with a sweet chili sauce. Our fish is as fresh as it can be in a restaurant that isn’t by the ocean.”

Monchong – the Bigscale Pomfret – is one of those unfamiliar fish that makes the SeafoodWatch’s good list and has started to appear on menus in the Hawaiian Islands.

In the end, however, what seafood appears on a restaurant’s menu depends on the season as well as demand. Chef Jason Shaeffer just announced that, as of April 1, “Halibut is Back!” on the new spring menu at Chimney Park Restaurant in Windsor.

Two openings and a closing

In Berthoud, owners Jeremy Roush and Debbie Hermance closed the Wayside Inn in February after just two years. The restaurant got enthusiastic online reviews, but the books just did not balance.

Ignoring the economic downturn, Greg Farnsworth has opened Patrick’s Irish Pub (which offers both shepherd’s pie and drop-in Spanish lessons) at 800 Ninth St. in Greeley. Over in the College Green Commons at 4689 20th St., a couple of real estate folks – Jonathan Cairns of Caleb Construction Services Inc. and Fran Burns, a broker associate with Prudential Rocky Mountain Realtors of Greeley – have opened Shenanigans. May their optimism trump all the dark market forces afoot in the land.

Jane Albritton is a contributing writer for the Northern Colorado Business Report. Her monthly column features restaurant and hospitality industry news. She can be contacted at jane@tigerworks.com.