This is one of the rare times I will ever illustrate a post with a photo I didn’t take myself. I went the Google Image route because I knew would have to order the fish to photograph it, and, for reasons that will soon become apparent, that will never happen.

The fish in the picture is sold in American sushi bars as shiro maguro, or white tuna. But it’s not tuna: it’s snake mackerel, also known as escolar.

Escolar has been illegal in Japan since 1977. When the world’s top (only?) consumer of fugu outlaws a fish, the rest of us should take note. But we don’t.

Escolar is the poor man’s o-toro. Its creamy richness is kind of reminiscent of prime tuna belly, if you close your eyes and think positive: the McDonald’s Southern-Style Chicken Sandwich, if you will, to o-toro’s Chick-Fil-A. More accurately, though, it’s the poor, self-hating man’s o-toro. Its flesh is crammed to bursting with indigestible wax esters, which, delicately put, go right through you–as and when they see fit.

I’ve never experienced keriorrhea myself, because my natural preference is for the svelter, wirier sea-creatures (yellowtail, fluke, octopus): when escolar has been served to me on a sashimi platter, I’ve instinctively resisted. I only recently learned what it was and what it does, when a dining companion had an unfortunate incident in the East Village.

Hey, it’s a free country. We can burn money and give ourselves emphysema, and we can drink ourselves into the grave. So I’m not campaigning for an outright escolar ban. What I would like to see is escolar clearly labeled on the menu, and not tucked away into chirashi lunches and sashimi bentos with unlisted contents. Because, if there is any possibility that you are going to have orange oil leaking uncontrollably out of your ass at some point in the next 36 hours, it should be because you love escolar, weighed the risks and decided to throw caution to the wind, NOT because your villainous sushi chef is cutting costs.

This is scandalous. Having worked in kitchens and agonized over hygiene and presentation, I am really astonished that there are chefs who could be so irresponsible with the digestive tracts of their customers. Just this weekend, eating at my neighbourhood sushi joint, I heard a waiter loudly recommend “white tuna” to an unsuspecting family of diners. It was the classic New York subway dilemma: do you legitimately help a person out–whether by intervening in a confrontation, challenging faulty directions or pointing out that her breast is exposed–if you as good as know that the person is only going to look at you funny? I’m not proud of it, but I left the restaurant without saying a word.

If you want to see what the fish looks like in sushi form, click here.

See also Radar’s feature on escolar, which concludes with the remarkable fact that Aquagrill included the fish in this year’s Valentine’s Day prix fixe.

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