Posted: 7/11/2005 7:14:00 AM EDT
| Had some for dinner last night. Wow yummy white fish. Nice texture. Expensive too. $24 for one piece! |
Patagonian Toothfish is usually illegally poached - which is WHY it is often so expensive, and why restaurants call it "Chilean Sea Bass" - so that people don't ask why they are serving an endagered and overfished species.  Don't get me wrong - I don't particularly care, since no Patagonian Toothfish has done anything for me lately, but in case anyone is interested, the fact is that the vast majority of Patagonian Toothfish are in fact caught illegally. |
I went to this seafood chain called "Shells". I don't think they are even in business anymore. I ordered halibut. I get a piece of halibut and a piece of walleye on my plate. I do a lot of fishing, I eat a lot of fish, I can tell the difference especially between something so different as halibut and walleye. I called the waitress over and asked her to repeat back to me what I ordered. Then I asked her if they offer a combo of halibut and walleye (just thinking they gave me the wrong plate). No they don't. I ask her why then do I have 2 kinds of fish on my plate. She then grabs the fork out of my hand and proceeds to flake apart both of my pieces of fish and says, "yea i guess they are different". I didn't eat anything else after that. We got our entire meal comped, but I would never go back there again. Its a wonder they went out of business. |
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Here's how I ensure I'm eating the freshest, non-poached fish possible: I catch my own and take utmost care of it cooling, cleaning, filleting, cooking and serving it. Oh, and it also provides an outlet for all the $$$ burning holes (J/K) in my pockets when there are no more guns to buy 
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Yes, I have. You apparantly haven't had a really good piece of fish, as in a the $25.95 for the main entree only, kind. |
This came up in a thread a week or two ago, but another REALLY tasty fish is the Hogfish - but they are almost impossible to find in restaurants, since apparently the only real way to catch them is by spearfishing. I didn't realize this, but captainpooby pointed it out to me - which explains why I've only ever seen Hogfish in a restaurant once, and that was in Key West (where there's a lot of hogfish in the waters). |
I'd find it pretty hard to enjoy a piece of fish that cost $25. I can fill up on sushi and sashimi for less than that. Meanwhile, if fried catfish aren't good enough for ya, there's always fried bass, crappie, and my absolute favorite, bream. I really need to go bream fishing, soon. 
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If I may add my measly 2 cents in  You guys have got to try freshly caught Striped Bass and Taug (Blackfish as they are also known) I have had Chilean Sea Bass and it is VERY good and one of my favorite, but Striped Bass caught off the NJ or DE coast is as good or better. And Blackfish is a close second. |
OT: Down in Wild Animal Kingdom Park in San Diego, Calif, they have a huge man-made lake. The lake started out with zero fish. But seabirds would drop fish eggs into the lake, and low and behold, fish appeared, actually catfish. Since there is no fishing in the lake, and there is no natural predators, the cat fish grow to enormous sizes. The catfish is SO BIG, that one of the workers told that it ate a duck that was swimming on the surface. |
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If anyone is in N. Calif., I would suggest a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It is a pretty nice place. From the Monterey Bay Aquarium web site: Chilean Seabass Chilean seabass, otherwise known as Patagonian toothfish, are found in the coldest oceans near Antarctica. They live at least 40 years and breed late in life. Heavy fishing is depleting their population. "Pirate" fishermen, who obey no fishing limits, are landing up to ten times the legal catch. Law enforcement is difficult in the vast and remote Antarctic oceans; law-abiding fishermen and international managers admit that pirate fishing is out of control. Chilean seabass are caught using either bottom trawls or longlines. Both methods have problems: bottom trawling can damage seafloor habitat, and longlines take a bycatch of seabirds, including endangered albatrosses, which get hooked and drowned when they try to snatch bait. Law-abiding longliners follow rules designed to protect birds, but pirate fishermen ignore these rules, and albatross populations are still sinking. |