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EATING WELL

EATING WELL; A Fish Puts Chefs in a Quandary

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March 10, 1999, Section F, Page 1Buy Reprints
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LATELY, some New York restaurants have been offering a fish of unparalleled richness that, miraculously, is hardly fattening at all. It's called escolar, and it would be a dream come true except for one problem:

For a significant number of people, the flesh of this fish acts like a laxative.

So restaurateurs have found themselves in a predicament -- go with it anyway, even if a few customers suffer, or give up on a food that other customers crave.

''People call from out of town to see if we have it,'' said Jeremy Marshall, the chef and owner of Aquagrill, who likens escolar to foie gras.

''It has a great balance of flavor, and it's very delicate,'' said Henry Meer, who serves it at the Cub Room in SoHo. ''And I love the whiteness of it.''

This is the same fish that has been banned in Japan since 1977 because the Japanese Government believes it is toxic. In this country, enough people complained about escolar's purgative effect for the Food and Drug Administration to issue an import bulletin in the early 1990's that recommended not selling the fish, which is found in the Gulf of Mexico, the South Pacific and tropical waters around the world. Early last year, the alert was canceled because the agency, unlike the Japanese Government, decided escolar was not toxic.

The fish had virtually disappeared from markets and menus, but now it's back. And so are the complaints.

Escolar (Lepidocybium flavobrunneum) and its West Coast cousin, walu (Ruvettus pretiosus), have been available across the country since the 1980's. The two fish, members of the snake mackerel family, are sometimes called white tuna. They are a by-catch of long-line fishing for tuna, which means their availability is erratic. They were once considered practically worthless. Now they retail for about $10 a pound.

What gives these fish their desirable taste is actually a component similar to those used to produce Olestra, the fake fat found in some snack foods: a fatty substance called wax esters, in this case, gempylotoxins. Humans cannot digest these wax esters because they lack the enzymes necessary to break the large molecules into smaller, absorbable components.

Harold McGee, the author of ''On Food and Cooking'' (Scribner, 1984), described the process elegantly in a paper he delivered at the 1997 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery: ''The wax esters therefore pass intact, their lubricating properties undiminished, from the small intestine into the colon, where a sufficient quantity will defeat our normal control over the ultimate disposition of food residues.''

Joseph R. Gurrera, owner of the Citarella markets on the Upper East and Upper West Sides, said he had heard no complaints. ''The fish flies out of here,'' he said.

Chefs who are serving escolar seem aware of the potential problem, in some cases thanks to information from their suppliers. ''It has been a controversial fish,'' said John McGuire, president of Gotham Seafood in Manhattan. ''The first time someone got diarrhea, we stopped selling the fish. We talked to the F.D.A. and found out it was nontoxic, not dangerous, and there was not much pain with the diarrhea, but we said we'd rather not sell it.''

Gotham Seafood still does, on request. But Mr. McGuire said last week that he might give it up completely. ''There have been enough cases of diarrhea so I don't think we'll be selling it,'' he added.

That will not make one of his customers, Mr. Meer, very happy. Although he serves escolar at the Cub Room, it is not on the menu at his newer restaurant, City Hall, in TriBeCa. ''It's extremely, extremely popular, but we've had a couple of calls from people who ate at City Hall and reacted to it,'' Mr. Meer said. ''They had hot flashes and sweated for about an hour. That's one of the reasons we took it off the menu.''

Mr. Meer, who has no problem consuming six or eight ounces of escolar, said he was very disappointed that he had to take it off the City Hall menu.

Don Pintabona, the chef of TriBeCa Grill, had a fling with escolar early on but also gave it up with great regret. ''It was hugely popular when we first opened in 1991,'' he said. ''We'd serve 60, 70, 80 portions a night, but I had one or two people who felt queasy and had headaches.'' Then, after Mr. Pintabona saw an article warning about adverse effects, it was goodbye escolar at TriBeCa Grill.

''With all the great fish out there, it seems silly to go with fish that may cause problems,'' he said.

''Wonderfully succulent,'' Charlie Trotter, the Chicago chef, raved in the cookbook ''Charlie Trotter's Seafood'' (Ten Speed Press, 1997). ''A spoon is all you really need.''

So far, there have not been any complaints at Aquagrill. ''It's so rich and decadent,'' Mr. Marshall said. ''We tell the customers that it is extremely high in natural oil and that it melts in your mouth.''

But will patrons construe such a description as a warning?

In 1990 the Hawaii Health Department warned people not to eat large quantities of it -- anything more than a six- or eight-ounce serving. (Mr. Trotter's recipe calls for three-ounce portions.)

But John Rowley, a seafood marketing specialist in Seattle, said: ''You can't predict who will be affected. I counseled restaurateurs I worked with not to serve it.''

On the other hand, there are those for whom discreet servings of these fish may be a blessing -- those who do not have enough fiber in their diets.

Mr. McGee said that the fish are used in folk medicine in the Canary Islands. The earliest written reference to them was in 1841, when escolar's purgative powers were already recognized.

Mr. McGee also noted that the fish is mentioned by Charles B. Nordhoff, the co-author of ''Mutiny on the Bounty,'' who fished for it and was moved to write: ''The celebrated effects of eating Ruvettus are somewhat exaggerated, but the fish is so good that one is likely to eat too much of it, when of course the purgative effects are bound to be felt.''

As if the purgative effects of escolar were not enough to make people wary, mishand ling presents another, far more serious problem.

Snake mackerel belong to a family of fish that can cause scombroid poisoning, the result of delayed refrigeration, which increases the histamine levels in the fish through bacterial decomposition.

The family includes tuna and mackerel, and scombroid poisoning, which causes diarrhea, vomiting and edema, cannot be cooked away.

Recently, there were cases of scombroid poisoning from escolar sold at Balthazar, said Michael LaHara, the downtown restaurant's general manager. One person went to the hospital.

Escolar is no longer on the menu.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section F, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: EATING WELL; A Fish Puts Chefs in a Quandary. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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