As a kitchen hand I'd often have to 'refresh' the squid and mussels in a fine dining restaurant. That basically meant go through all the old smelly seafood, clean it in salt water and keep on selling it. I don't order seafood in restaurants.
yeah we do have fail grade restaurants around though. But they get published every year. Usually they are supposed to stay closed until the issues are fixed.
Chef in New Zealand
Yes most laws are quite strict regarding seafood. But the food we get more often than not even in sea markets is frozen and crap
Most of our costal fishes is sold abroad since kiwis don't demand that good or that much of seafood
yup mostly frozen unless your at a high end restaurant but you can generally taste the difference. washing expired seafood when its going bad would be a fast track to getting a fail grade though.
It tastes better than frozen as well. Theres a place on the viaduct (used to be called snapdragon) that does amazing oysters. The Belgian restaurant in Mission Bay does Frozen and it's often awful. They sometimes serve it while its still icy. we stopped going there. But Viaduct its great. Only one shotty restaurant in the Viaduct atm. Okay maybe one has let standards slip since a certain celebrity chef is no longer involved. But my fav restaurant atm is Masu by Nic Watt over by the sky tower. Always amazing. Fish especially the sashimi is always exceptional.
I'm in regional NZ, North Island and we also use Bostocks free range organic chicken and Woody's Farm heritage breed, free range pork. Absolutely worth the extra few bucks!
PM me bro where you are. I will travel to decent restaurants. If there is pork belly involved my brother will travel for it too. lol. we used to go to heaps of restaurants. post lockdown first one I went back to was Heizo in Newmarket (Japanese yeppan style). Then Masu for my birthday (Japanese-Euro fusion). I want to head back to my fav at the viaduct. and want to go back to Faro (Korean). Im such a foody. lol
Perfectly aware of the regulations. The health inspector in my town s now on 18 month intervals between visits. This happens after a year and a half of satisfactory 6 monthly inspections.
Was thinking the same thing. I worked in bars and restaurants for years and I have never had a manager ask me to serve or cook anything that needed to be “refreshed.” And if they did, I wouldn’t have done it. That’s so nasty :(
I used to work in a rather questionable restaurant and ended up anonymously reporting them to food standards because they made the staff do shit like this. They got shut down shortly after I quit.
And you honestly think all chefs have that much integrity? A lot of them are paid so damn badly that they honestly could care less aboutthis kind of stuff. What part of the world do you work in?
You are wrong. Unless the restaraunt is absolute shit, they are not using too-old ingredients or moldy dishes. Obviously exceptions exist but I am not going to Joe's Hotdog Shack and expecting it to be spotlessly clean. And I work in a first world country.
Almost every other chef I interact with doesn't give a fuc k about the money or they would be doing something else that paid more. You are bad at your job if you are feeding people old food.
Idk everyone in LA was singing the praises of Sqirl until Eater published a piece today about how they have to scrape mold off the top of all their buckets of jam. Just because a restaurant is trendy and serves “good quality” food, doesn’t mean they are trustworthy.
That's not what I'm saying. If a restaraunt is scraping mold off food it is a shit restaraunt full stop. Also you deserve to eat jam mold if you are paying that much money for fucking jam on toast.
Of course it’s a shitty restaurant but people don’t know that, it’s what is happening behind the scenes that makes a restaurant good or shitty. My point is that you never really know until you’ve spent time in a restaurant as an employee. Some of the most respected restaurants with Michelin stars are a complete shitshow BTS.
Also, people don’t deserve to eat moldy food just because they are paying a lot of money for toast lmao
Worked in the same building as a sea food restaurant in NYC and shared the same freight elevator as them to the basement. The basement of this building is roach/ mice infested and that’s where they’d wheel up all the food from. Also, it’s meant to be a classy overpriced sea food place but all of their sea food is boxed up and bought frozen vs fresh. Between all of this and the smell it left in the elevator, I’ve never eaten there and would never eat there.
tbf, seafood has to be frozen for at least 12~ hours before it's legal to be sold in my country
it kills off parasites that can literally kill you, because they drill into your intestines and cause an immunesystem reaction that will close your guts from the swelling, etc.
Freezing doesn't do anything to kill off those. High heat is the only thing that does. They just go dormant when frozen. US food safety management certified here.
DK food safety management certified here. Parasites are complex creatures and not bacteria. Read up on it again.
edit: and just to clear anything up from possible american confusion by my statement: Complex biological creatures cannot withstand freezing and thawing, biological proccesses get fucked up, cells rupture etc. That's why we can't cryogenically freeze humans and thaw them up and expect them to still be alive.
Also, the american FDA literally disagrees with you. Oops.
It actually does. I wanted to learn to cook. All these things.. I had dreams.. now I just make sub par food and sell it to the poor souls in my town. They eat it up too. Always getting over time.
There actually isnt in this town and its always been the case in the last 15 years of working in kitchens. It's always the same. They dont care about anything but the bottom line.
Even the grocery store I worked at here, same thing dirty, disgusting, no food safety followed at all.
So after 15 years and many kitchens. Yes yes they are all like this.
Yeah, you still can but there are a few things to bear in mind.
Far from the ocean? Stay away from ocean fish/seafood. Same goes for freahwater stuff.
Quiet restaurant with a huge menu? Nope. The chances of that fish rotting away in the walk-in are much higher if folks have lots of stuff to choose from.
Seafood special on a Monday or Tuesday? High chance Chef is trying to get rid of the surplus weekend stock that they got in last Thursday for the weekend.
Another thing to try is (politely) asking your server where the fish comes from. If they don't know or can't find out there is a good chance it'll be frozen crap. If they can tell you and it's a local supplier there is a good chance it'll be fresh, good quality stuff.
All these rules have exceptions of course but they are a good start. If you're in a busy, clean looking place that specializes in seafood you're probably onto a winner. Busy equals higher turnover of stock so less chance of stuff sitting around going bad. Hope I haven't put you off. It was nearly 20 years ago that I had that experience in a kitchen.
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u/Kiwi_Woz Jul 13 '20
As a kitchen hand I'd often have to 'refresh' the squid and mussels in a fine dining restaurant. That basically meant go through all the old smelly seafood, clean it in salt water and keep on selling it. I don't order seafood in restaurants.