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Nov 14, 2005 22:41

Every now and then I see an interesting article I'd like to share with someone, but rarely do I know who offhand I should share it with. I believe I will post them here and those of you interested can peruse it if/when you are so inclined. :)


Crudo, ceviche, sashimi, tartare, poke, sushi -- it's all raw fish.
And we are swimming in it.

Open just about any menu, from hipster bars to four-star
restaurants, and raw fish will be right at the top. What once was
the exclusive province of Japanese restaurants and sushi bars is now
everywhere.

Considered exotic or even downright unpalatable just a couple of
decades ago, raw fish is squarely mainstream, as is Japanese food in
general.

Today's buzz, though, is all about crudo, the Italian version. The
word itself means "raw" in Italian and Spanish, and generally refers
to slices of fish drizzled with subtle or pungent oils and accented
with acid and spice -- olive oil, lemon and salt, in the classic
presentation.

Increasingly, though, crudo is shorthand for any kind of raw fish --
chopped tartares, marinated ceviches, sliced sashimis, paper-thin
carpaccios. The stumpy word itself conveys little about the silky,
sensual feel of eating a raw scallop glistening with olive oil and
shivering under sheer fennel slices and bits of orange, as it's
served at San Francisco's hip new Bar Crudo, above the Stockton
Street tunnel.

It signals nothing about the delicacy of raw ono dressed up with
cucumber, watermelon and lime, as chef-owner Phil West prepares it
at his 4-month-old Mission District hot spot, Range. Or the zing of
raw halibut with red wine vinegar and saffron, as Cav Wine Bar on
Market Street does it.

Glib New Yorkers like to call crudo "Italian sashimi," and they give
the Mario Batali-Joe Bastianich powerhouse credit for creating
modern crudo at their midtown fish place, Esca.

San Francisco chef Joyce Goldstein, currently at work on a book
about antipasti, scoffs at that notion.

"Crudo has been served in Italy for generations in all the fishing
towns" -- in Puglia, in the Marche, where you might be served thin
slices of swordfish flavored with ingredients at hand -- olive oil,
lemon, rosemary, she says.

But Esca's popularity put crudo on the map, and young chefs all over
the world have taken the concept and run with it.

In San Francisco, chefs from simple Mission cafes to Union Square's
haute Michael Mina, are using raw fish to show off their creativity.
Italian-inspired Quince features crudo; so do beef palaces like
Alexander's Steakhouse in Cupertino.

Chefs are using seasonal local ingredients like crimson pears and
almond oil, as co-owner Mike Selvera does with Spanish mackerel for
a fall offering at Bar Crudo. And they're adopting seasonings from
all over the world -- smoked sea salt or tangerine oil, as well as
traditional Asian ginger, sesame and scallions.

Raw fish isn't something you'd necessarily expect on a menu
alongside barley-stuffed chard and roast chicken. But at Range, West
always has one raw or gently cured fish among his starters, as a
light alternative to heartier sausage or venison dishes.

"I love sushi; I've always eaten it," West says. "But I wanted to
bring raw fish into more of an American way of doing it."

Blurring the line

On the menu last week, he draped West Coast coho salmon with a pale
avocado puree, bright salmon roe and watermelon radish. Other times
he's topped raw fish with summer melon and a light lime vinaigrette.

"It's ingredient-driven," he says, using chef-speak to describe the
popular style of cooking with the freshest and best ingredients, and
letting their flavors shine.

In San Francisco restaurants, the line is increasingly blurred among
the various raw fish traditions, crudo and sashimi and ceviche. If
our taste buds have been primed by sushi, we no longer expect that
raw fish must be served with rice, wasabi and soy, or, Latin-style,
bathed in lime juice -- though we like that, too.

Take Selvera's selection of crudos on a recent night. He always
serves four, along with more traditional raw bar offerings like
oysters and seafood platters.

The most Japanese-influenced version was his tuna -- rosy cubes
seasoned with sesame oil; the Asian hot sauce, sriracha; soy sauce;
and scallions. And the scallop described above borrowed most clearly
from Italy.

But he also drizzled tangerine oil over a slice of halibut with
smoked sea salt, apple and jalapeno. And cubes of Arctic char
glistened under creamy horseradish, green tobiko and dill.

"I think of it as world flavors," says Selvera.

The crudo story is perhaps best told on one menu -- at Ame, the
sleek new fusion restaurant from Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani in the
St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco.

Chef Sone is Japanese, but his culinary roots are just as deeply
French and Northern Californian. At Ame, he melds at least a dozen
uncooked fish traditions into seven exquisitely balanced offerings
from the sashimi bar.

"Every culture has a raw fish dish," Sone says.

His ceviche is halibut with bird's-eye chile, watermelon radish and
yuzu, an Asian play on Latin flavors. His crudo is Italian --
striped bass with Meyer lemon, olive oil and salt.

His poke, Hawaii's tartare, features ogo seaweed. His sashimi puts
ankimo (monkfish liver) alongside sea bream, sprinkled with ponzu.

"Tuna Five" showcases uncooked, barely cooked or cured tuna in
styles borrowed from Spain (mojama), Sardinia (bottarga), Japan
(zuke and tataki), and in the tartare style, whose origin is murky.

The popularity of sushi, which in the United States has gone from
super-rare to supermarket, set the table for raw fish's move to the
mainstream, Sone says.

Healthier fare

It also fit with the trend toward fresh and healthy eating, which
has put fish of all kinds front and center.

And transportation has made it all possible to get the best fresh
fish from anywhere in the world, says Sone. He can be slicing
anything he wants, whether it's Chesapeake Bay crab or toro from
Tokyo's famed Tsukiji market, the world's biggest, the day after
it's caught.

Really good fresh fish tastes better and lends itself to subtler
flavors. It doesn't need a load of wasabi and soy to disguise the
taste.

And it lends itself to modern chefs' emphasis on great ingredients.

"I always have a lot of raw fish on the menu," says chef Michael
Mina, who features perhaps four or five dishes at his namesake San
Francisco restaurant, and even more at his Sea Blue in Las Vegas.

Back in 1992, when Mina and chef George Morrone opened Aqua, they
developed a tuna tartare that was such a hit, it's still on the
menu. Widely copied, tartare catapulted raw fish onto non-Japanese
menus all over the city and, eventually, the country.

Mina serves a version of the dish -- currently using Bosc pear along
with Scotch bonnet chiles -- on his own menu.

Chefs like James Ormsby at Jack Falstaff in San Francisco's South of
Market neighborhood have made it their own. He serves a tuna and
avocado tartare in a martini glass, topped with a ponzu gelee, yuzu
cream and fried rice crackers.

Ormsby says he was deep into tartares when he was chef at Bruno's in
the Mission. Then he ate at Esca shortly after it opened and caught
crudo fever.

"It was so cool," he says, especially the idea that so many oils,
from pungent olive to tangy citrus, could bring out the best in
different kinds of fish.

The trend isn't just American, he added. Eating his way around
Barcelona last summer, he found some kind of crudo on just about
every menu. The most memorable dishes matched cured anchovies with
raspberry jam, and salmon with vanilla oil.

Mina says the crudo trend makes sense given Americans' love of
strong, bold flavors. Sushi and sashimi led the way, especially the
souped-up versions Americans like to down with liberal applications
of hot wasabi and salty soy.

What crudo, tartare, sashimi, sushi all have in common, he says, is
the skillful balance of fat, acid, spice and salt. Beurre blanc, a
mainstay of French cuisine, does the same thing but with butter,
white wine and garlic. Raw fish, vegetable oils and spice get there
in a leaner way, he says.

His strongest influence remains Japanese cuisine, he says, "probably
because I love it so much."

Same goes for chefs all over the city, among them Ron Siegel at the
Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.

Emphasizing Japanese

Siegel's elegant Japanese-influenced menu offers lots of raw fish --
a bluefin tuna tartare punched up with balsamic vinegar, or his spot
prawn sashimi with lemon juice and tomato gelee.

"I'm cooking what I like to eat," he says. "It's a cleaner and
healthier way to eat, and every day I'm appreciating that more."

When his style was more French at the now-closed Charles Nob Hill,
he served oyster ravioli with pasta, lemon beurre blanc and caviar.
Now, he makes a version using sheer slices of raw spiny lobster
instead of pasta to encase the oysters, and serves in on top of a
Meyer lemon gelee.

That drive toward clean, healthy food is part of the reason that
Japanese restaurants are riding a surge of popularity all over the
country, according to Tim Zagat, who publishes the Zagat Survey
restaurant guides.

Zagat's 2006 edition of America's Top Restaurants, as voted by its
readers, put Japanese restaurants neck and neck with French as the
best restaurants, not just on the West Coast, where Asian food has
long been popular, but up and down the East Coast and in Chicago and
Denver.

"I think Japanese food and cooking has had a profound influence on
the way everyone eats and cooks in the United States," Zagat
says. "The purity of ingredients is what it's all about."

Raw fish is a big part of that.

"When I grew up, I thought raw fish was a fraternity prank," says
Zagat. He can remember a prominent big-city food critic saying she'd
never review a Japanese restaurant because she couldn't stand the
idea of raw fish.

"Now I see it all the time. It's in French restaurants, Spanish
restaurants, Italian restaurants," he says. "It's crudo, it's
carpaccio. They never would have dared do that 10 or 15 years ago."

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Where to sample crudo
Crudo and its raw fish cousins are all over menus in the Bay Area,
from casual wine bars to four-star restaurants. Here are few that
span the range:

Alexander's Steakhouse, 10330 N. Wolfe Road (near Interstate 280),
Cupertino; (408) 446-2222.

Ame, 689 Mission St, (at Third Street, in the St. Regis Hotel), San
Francisco; (415) 284-4040.

Bar Crudo, 603 Bush St. (near Stockton), San Francisco; (415) 956-
0396.

Cav Wine Bar, 1666 Market St. (between Franklin and Gough), San
Francisco; (415) 437-1770.

The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, 600 Stockton St. (at
California), San Francisco; (415) 773-6198.

Jack Falstaff, 598 Second St. (at Brannan), San Francisco; (415) 836-
9239.

Michael Mina, 335 Powell St. (at the Westin St. Francis), San
Francisco; (415) 397-9222.

Pearl Oyster Bar & Restaurant, 5634 College Ave. (near Ocean View
Drive), Oakland. (510) 654-5426.

Picco, 320 Magnolia Ave. (at King), Larkspur; (415) 924-0300.

Range, 842 Valencia St. (at 20th Street), San Francisco; (415) 282-
8283.

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-----------
Do try this at home
Some dishes scream "don't try this at home," but crudo is not one of
them.

The key is to start with the right fish -- and a very sharp knife,
says Tom Worthington of Monterey Fish Market, a San Francisco
wholesaler and Berkeley retailer of some of the Bay Area's finest
seafood.

Here's his advice:

Buy the right type and cut of fish. Be sure to ask for help from
your local fishmonger, and make clear that the fish you're buying
will be eaten raw. "Typically, you'd ask for something you'd eat for
sashimi," Worthington says.

-- Grouper, striped bass, halibut, tuna, albacore, ono, salmon and
even sardines and mackerel work well, as do scallops, shrimp and sea
urchins. Raw lobster and crab are difficult to handle.

-- Firm fish like tuna and salmon lend themselves better to being
diced small for tartare. Softer-textured fish can become gummy when
cut small.

-- Be sure the fish is cut with the grain. That's why fillets are
generally best -- you can easily cut smooth strips. Steaks, which
are cut across the grain, don't work as well.

Cutting tips. If you have a pound of fillet, cut it with the grain
into strips and slices, depending on how you want it to look.

-- Any sharp knife will work, but a long, slim blade is best.

-- Remove sinew as you go along.

-- Room-temperature fish is hard to cut, so make sure your fish
really cold when you're cutting. Worthington cautions against
partial freezing, because it's easy to forget the fish is in the
freezer and freeze it completely.

Add flavors judiciously. Once you have your pieces, you can anoint
them with flavored oils.

-- Use light flavors for mild fish; stronger fish can take more
pungent flavors.

-- Citrus or vinegar can punch the taste up with acidity. Salt or
spice is up to you. Worthington loves fennel pollen on crudo, for
example.

-- For the classic Italian crudo, it's simple: just add olive oil,
lemon and salt. And move over, Mario Batali.

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