Shrink in the Kitchen

A 2/22/10 piece in The Boston Globe by Devra First wrote about the dangers of overfishing blue fin tuna.  A few days later, the Globe ran an unsigned op-ed calling for chefs and industry to curtail their use of the fish.  Save the blue fin, save jobs.

But yesterday while trawling for fish in Cambridge and Boston,  looking for sources, I came across New Deal Market on Cambridge Street in East Cambridge.  It’s a clean, wonderful store selling thick filets of fresh fish, including hake, cod, and…blue fin tuna.  I’d never seen it sold as retail in the U.S. before.  Apparently, the store caters to a Japanese clientele ready to shell out the $39 per pound.

I would have thought that more discretion was called for: I mean, why not have a system where you go up to the counter and say, “Takeshi has a big smile,” and the counter person could say, “His sister’s smile is bigger,” and then sort of tilt his or head to the back room where you’d hand over an envelope of twenties and in exchange get a small, brown paper bag of endangered fish.