Do You Know What You Get at the Restaurant?

In Florida you can order grouper and many other delicacies. Are you sure you are indeed eating grouper?

There is one restaurant I will eat at whenever I get to Florida. In Tampa, look up the Columbia Restaurant since they will not serve grouper because they cannot verify that their supplier will sell them actual grouper.

Other restaurants have been caught selling all sorts of fish for grouper. Asian Catfish, Tilapia and other cheaper fish can be passed off as grouper. Florida inspectors have found such substitutions all over Florida.

The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulators
is in the business of regulating business in their menus. They have found 139 cases of grouper substitutes and that is more than ½ of what they found. They also found fake crab at 75 cases and fake tuna at 34 cases during their investigation of offered fish meals.

One seafood company owner was charged and sent to prison for selling over 1 million pounds of Asian Catfish marketed as grouper. In Miami, some inspectors caught workers at a processing plant repackaging Vietnamese Catfish as grouper. That allowed an increase in sale price from $2.50 to $6.00 a pound.

Some fishermen work hard to catch grouper which is to be caught with a single hook and do not appreciate all the substitutions.

I found a really good website where you can check all
this out
where there are pictures of what it should look like and clickable links for lists of restaurants that are worthy of a citizens visit. Also there is plenty of other information too. By voting with your dollars it will help folks become more in line with the law for misrepresentation of foods in restaurants and product substitution. If there is not a market for imposter fish then the gain is taken away.

Grouper is lean thick and firm fleshed while Asian Catfish is thinner and the filets are darker.

There is now a lab in Florida where the DNA can be tested to find out when substitutions have been made. They have found Emperor Fish from Hong Kong, Hake from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf areas, Sutchi found as Panga in supermarkets and they live in Thailand, Bream which are freshwater fish from Europe and America, and green weakfish from the Atlantic and some fisheries.

While the lab has tested restaurant fare they had not completed any testing on supermarket products. A wife of one of the lab workers bought some fish and had the hubby test it and though he did not know what it was, he knew it was not grouper. Hmmm, that sure is concerning to me.

Sysco Food Services appears to be caring about what they sell. They have cooperated with an audit by the Attorney General of Florida and have randomly tested their received fish as well. They have caught a couple of shipments and returned them when found to be non grouper fish. Perhaps they are one company to support.

Buyer Beware has never been truer than now. Good luck in all your restaurant adventures.