Unagi talk

Unagi is a very popular ingredient for sushi, and somewhat surprisingly (it is eel, after all), it is becoming quite popular in the United States. It’s served as nigiri or featured in rolls such as the dragon roll and caterpillar roll.

I am a big unagi fan. Whenever I return home to Japan, it’s one of the foods I can’t wait to have. My favorite restaurant is called Hirokawa in Kyoto’s Arashiyama district. They fillet the eel from the back and charbroil and steam it so the meat and skin are very tender. That’s the Edo (old Tokyo) style. The eel is served on a bed of freshly cooked rice, which steams it even more. The unagi is so tender, it melts in your mouth. It makes my mouth water just thinking about its buttery, smoky flavor and soufflé-like texture. The first bite alone is worth the trip from Seattle.

It is well known that salmon are born in fresh water and spend most of their adult life in the sea before they come back to spawn in the river they were born in. Eels are the opposite. They are born in the sea and come up to fresh water to spend their adult lives before returning to the sea to spawn.

Much of the eel’s life is still a mystery. Scientists only recently (2006) located the spawning ground of Asian eels in very deep water near Guam. When the eels grow to be a few inches long, they travel closer to the shores of Asian countries to get ready to migrate into fresh water. That’s when they get caught and transferred to the farms to be raised to about a foot and a half before they become the unagi we eat.

This way of “half farm-raising” has caused a shortage of eel fingerlings as the demand for them rose rapidly. As Japanese cuisine became popular around the world, people who would otherwise never eat the slimy snakelike eel have tried it and like it. I have seen it happen at my sushi bar many times.

There are of course problems in the environment the unagi live in as well. Many of the rivers they used to migrate up are dammed and polluted. The ocean water they live in is probably not so good either.

Recently Taiwan decided not to export eel fingerlings to Japan. A few years back, Europe stopped exporting the fish to China, which was experiencing a shortage. The price for eel has gone up rapidly as a result. We are paying a higher price for it as well at my restaurant in Seattle.

Scientists have figured out a way to hatch eel eggs artificially. But it isn’t sufficient to actually apply to commercial farming. It is going to be a while before we can rely on this technology. Until then, we need to figure out how to keep the eel fishery sustainable. I don’t have an answer for this. But I think eels deserve a little more attention — like the much prettier salmon get. So next time you eat unagi, think about the long journey they make.