Operators fight seafood scare: pollution reports spark patron worries

Nation's Restaurant News, August 22, 1988 by Joe Edwards

Operators fight seafood scare

Seafood house operators are trying to maintain traffic counts this summer by assuring customers that the shellfish and other seafood on their menus is safe.

Customers have been asking tough questions about the origin of restaurant seafood in the wake of widespread reports of worsening ocean pollution.

But restaurateurs claim that customer traffic remains steady and adequate supplies of untainted seafood are available, although often at premium prices.

Nestor Lane, who runs The Fisherman in Asbury Park, N.J., a resort town whose beaches have been closed by pollution for much of the summer, has been informing his customers that most of his seafood comes from Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island and the waters of northern New England.

"We have questions," Lane said. "People are asking where it comes from, probably more than usual." Customer counts at the popular beach-front restaurant are high, Lane said--"Not as high as they used to be, but they're okay."

Lane has noticed a dropoff in fish sales at his other restaurant in nearby Long Branch, where "we're selling a little more beef than seafood. It possibly could be related to the seafood scare."

At the Union Oyster House in Boston, the staff assures customers that none of the restaurant's seafood comes from the Harbor area, which is polluted by industrial waste and inadequately treated sewage.

"A lot of informed people ask where our lobsters come from," said manager Mark Toczko. "We've had more inquiries than usual." Union Oyster House buys lobsters from Maine, swordfish from Argentina and the North Atlantic, and other fish from Prince Edward Island in Maine and the Georges Bank off Cape Cod.

"Some Boston restaurants serve lobster from the Harbor area," Toczko said. "We don't."

The 428-unit Red Lobster seafood chain has been fielding "a few more questions asked by consumers, but we haven't had any guest count decline," according to spokesman Dick Monroe.

"Our managers have been assuring customers that our fish is caught far offshore, and that we have a large quality control department to make sure the fish is fresh and safe," Monroe said. Red Lobster is also buying more farm-raised seafood than ever before, including shrimp, Norwegian salmon, catfish, and rainbow trout.

At Legal Sea Foods in Boston, a printed message on the weekly menu informs customers that Legal employs a quality control manager schooled in food science and microbiology who checks bacteria levels in all eating and cooking utensils, raw foods, shellfish, and other seafood.

"By state law, all shellfish is sold already tagged with information about its harvesting bed, the retail shipper, licensing numbers, and other data," the message states. "We retest every shipment of shellfish served and sold at Legal's to ensure it meets our own high standards."

Up and down the East coast, in towns along the Gulf of Mexico, and in Puget Sound in Seattle and other areas, however, restaurateurs are clearly worried about the future.

In New York, the latest state health department guidelines caution consumers to limit their consumption of bluefish and striped bass caught in Long Island Sound and the Atlantic. Pregnant women and children should avoid freshwater fish completely, according to the guidelines. And health officials in New York and other states recommend that sushi, gravlax, ceviche, and other forms of raw and undercooked fish be avoided altogether.

Consumers are apparently listening. At Coastal, a popular seafood restaurant in Manhattan, three customers in the course of one hour were observed recently sending back perfect-looking swordfish steaks because they weren't cooked enough. Many chefs have been following a trend to undercook certain types of fish, including tuna, swordfish, and salmon.

Meanwhile, consumers continue to be bombarded with reports of filthy ocean waters, closed claim and oyster beds, and massive fish kills.

The pollution scare comes at a time when per capita consumption of fish has been rising steadily and restaurants specializing in seafood had been doing a turnaway business.

Finding adequate supplies of certain types of seafood is becoming a problem. Fish and crab harvest are off in Chesapeake Bay, where the taking of rockfish has been banned. Lobsters and crabs with strange burnholes and fish with rotting fins are showing up in coastal waters in parts of New England. Striped bass in the Hudson River have been declared unfit for human consumption, and between 20 percent and 50 percent of the shellfish beds in New York, Louisiana, and Galveston Bay in Texas are closed at any given time.

A relatively new virus that can be deadly to humans is infecting oysters taken from the Gulf of Mexico, and a parasite is devastating harvests of oysters and softshell clams in Chesapeake Bay.

For Richard Cernak, owner of Old Obrycki crab house in Baltimore, many of the crabs harvested from Chesapeake Bay this spring and summer were not fit for a crabhouse--the shells were too soft and the crabs too small, he said. He bought crabs in Louisiana and other areas to supplement his meager local supply.