So they're doing something about it for shrimp, which is good.

https://gardenandgun.com/articles/shrimp-fraud-allegations-are-rocking-the-restaurant-world-we-talked-to-the-company-blowing-the-whistle/

Any ideas about how to do it for prime beef? I guess a test could be made for black angus/wagyu

Been going on for years. Went to college with a guy from the Beaumont area. His stepdad controlled all the seafood distribution to the restaurants in southeast TX. Made a fortune paying chefs under the table to serve seafood that wasnt what it was supposed to be. Owners didnt know and were paying full price.

I've been to 2 different upscale restaurants where I ordered a specific kind of fish, and was served a nasty little piece of tilapia, thinking I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Same thing happened to me a few years ago at a very fancy seafood place, but wasn't on the coast. Figured I wouldn't know what wahoo tasted like or looked like.

Unfortunately I can be a real ahole and was,

Traveling for a living and being on the road over 200 nights a year I dined in restaurants a lot. I never really had any knowingly misrepresented food….that I know of.
Specifically speaking of fish they always were honest of what it was….especially if you ask.
I guess I really don't care as long as it's good food and I enjoy it. I could really care less where it comes from as long as it's good safe food. ….and they disclose what it is and where it comes from.
Would be a good thing to require them to always disclose it but I don't want a meal to double in price or more just to eat local caught shrimp. At least allow me the choice?
Am I looking at this wrong?

garden & gun is a great magazine

We require country of origin labeling for nuts and bolts, but not beef.

Why?

Because cheap bolts and nuts can make things break or fall down?

I remember 20 something years ago went to a seafood restaurant in Port Aransas I had worked at previously. Asked what type of fish they used in a dish (can't remember the dish) server or whoever I talked to said it was tilapia. Definitely did not order that, and I think I've only been back once since.

Had to inform them that tilapia isn't Fresh Seafood, and not even native to Texas.

Gunny456 said:

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Because cheap bolts and nuts can make things break or fall down?

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Or cheap beef can will keep u on the crapper all night?

Or worse.

I'd like to know where my food comes from too...

Roger that.

herbie said:

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garden & gun is a great magazine

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This is equivalent to the catfish/pangasius mislabeling. Lots of places serve "catfish" that is actually imported pangasius. That stuff has a two-year production to expiration date range.

Gunny456 said:

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Traveling for a living and being on the road over 200 nights a year I dined in restaurants a lot. I never really had any knowingly misrepresented food….that I know of.
Specifically speaking of fish they always were honest of what it was….especially if you ask.
I guess I really don't care as long as it's good food and I enjoy it. I could really care less where it comes from as long as it's good safe food. ….and they disclose what it is and where it comes from.
Would be a good thing to require them to always disclose it but I don't want a meal to double in price or more just to eat local caught shrimp. At least allow me the choice?
Am I looking at this wrong?

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I generally take your stance but some countries have awful food standards, so Inwould pay extra for wild caught or American farm raised. While a few chinese shrimp here and there aren't a problem repeated ingestion over longer periods could be problematic.

Yep. 100% I agree.

The issue is that they advertised/charged for local/gulf shrimp and sold Asian farm raised shrimp.

There's quite a taste difference, aside from the probable safety/health issues/as a general rule, I don't want liars making my food.

I was told SC requires a tag be kept with shellfish, identifying the source, in the restaurant kitchen. If correct, either this is a lot of liars in kitchens or something quite dangerous from a wholesaler. (UPDATE: it was clarified that such tags are only for clams/oysters/mussels to identify beds, in case there is an issue with run-off/red tide, etc. Shrimp are not required to have a tag - though it seems like an expansion is in order.)

I think people would be amazed at how many "high end" ($300+ a plate) places hate their customers and try to sell cheap junk at very high prices.

Not to derail but thought I would share this with you guys:
So I had to do my Summer Semester for WFS down at the Moody College of Marine Sciences in Galveston.
In one of the fisheries classes each one of us students had to do a specific project/paper of our choice as it related to seafood and species of food.
We had about 35 people in the class that came from various places in Texas ranging from the Pan handle, El Paso, Tyler, Houston etc.
My project was centered and focused around shrimp and the perceived preference of "taste" of the shrimp based upon where the students were born and raised. Working on the possibility/thoughts that people would " prefer" or like best the taste of the shrimp from their local restaurants where they normally ate shrimp…..and to see if what taste of the shrimp they were used to eating was what they "liked" the best.
So here were my sampling's of shrimp.
1.) Fresh right off a Shrimp Boat at Galveston never frozen.
2.) Frozen packaged shrimp from a grocery store inland.
3.) Old frozen bait shrimp in a box from the bait stand.
Method of Preparation to eat:
Each sampling was simply boiled and no spices or seasonings added.
Heads and shell and veins removed.
Each student was given four shrimp of each sample. Samples were labeled as #1, #2, and #3.
They each were to rate which order they thought taste the best.
I recorded that data per student. I then placed their order of preference based upon how far they had been raised/ lived from the coast.
The results were very definitive:
The guys that had been born and raised the furthest from the coast actually rated the older bait shrimp and the packaged frozen as the best tasting to them. They thought the fresh off the boat shrimp tasted to them the worst.
The guys that lived along the coast rated the fresh off the boat sample as the best and the old bait shrimp as the worst.
So the results showed that the actual preferred "taste" was directly related to what people had acquired over time of what they had been used to eating.
Dr. McEcheron was the prof. and he thought the results were very interesting. Enough that I got an "A" on the project. .
Thanks to all for taking the time to read.
Perhaps there is a person here on TA that was in that class and remembers the test?

Gunny456 said:

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Not to derail but thought I would share this with you guys:
So I had to do my Summer Semester for WFS down at the Moody College of Marine Sciences in Galveston.
In one of the fisheries classes each one of us students had to do a specific project/paper of our choice as it related to seafood and species of food.
We had about 35 people in the class that came from various places in Texas ranging from the Pan handle, El Paso, Tyler, Houston etc.
My project was centered and focused around shrimp and the perceived preference of "taste" of the shrimp based upon where the students were born and raised. Working on the possibility/thoughts that people would " prefer" or like best the taste of the shrimp from their local restaurants where they normally ate shrimp…..and to see if what taste of the shrimp they were used to eating was what they "liked" the best.
So here were my sampling's of shrimp.
1.) Fresh right off a Shrimp Boat at Galveston never frozen.
2.) Frozen packaged shrimp from a grocery store inland.
3.) Old frozen bait shrimp in a box from the bait stand.
Method of Preparation to eat:
Each sampling was simply boiled and no spices or seasonings added.
Heads and shell and veins removed.
Each student was given four shrimp of each sample. Samples were labeled as #1, #2, and #3.
They each were to rate which order they thought taste the best.
I recorded that data per student. I then placed their order of preference based upon how far they had been raised/ lived from the coast.
The results were very definitive:
The guys that had been born and raised the furthest from the coast actually rated the older bait shrimp and the packaged frozen as the best tasting to them. They thought the fresh off the boat shrimp tasted to them the worst.
The guys that lived along the coast rated the fresh off the boat sample as the best and the old bait shrimp as the worst.
So the results showed that the actual preferred "taste" was directly related to what people had acquired over time of what they had been used to eating.
Dr. McEcheron was the prof. and he thought the results were very interesting. Enough that I got an "A" on the project. .
Thanks to all for taking the time to read.

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Very interesting! Thanks

You bet. It was some good bull I thought I would share due to the subject of the OP.

SunrayAg said:

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I've been to 2 different upscale restaurants where I ordered a specific kind of fish, and was served a nasty little piece of tilapia, thinking I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

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Name names man.

I'm sure it goes on but I've never had it happen that I could tell.

High end restaurants live on their reputations of serving excellent food. Why would they "hate" their customers?
Restaurants survive and live on word of mouth, recommendations and reviews. If what you say is true about hating and deceiving their customers with bad food they will go out of business quickly…..and no longer be a high end restaurant.
I don't go back to a high end steak house if the steak I get sucks.

My best high school buddy's family owned a pretty large older restaurant in SA….and it had been in SA for years and very popular and not cheap.
His dad told me something about the restaurant business that stuck with me.
He said he only gets one chance to serve a customer good food. If he screws up he said that customer would maybe never come back and so the food always had to be good as he may not get a second chance to serve that customer.
He said lots of other businesses could screw up like a car or boat or lawnmower that didn't run right….. that the customers could bring them back to get fixed…. they had a second chance to make it right. He didn't have that luxury in the restaurant business.

I remember back in the 80s it was somewhat common for restaurants in Galveston and Kemah to sell fake scallops made from stingray meat cut with a cookie cutter type tool. The easy way to tell the difference was that the real scallops had just a bit of grittiness to them and the stingray meat didn't. No idea if that is still going on or not.

Rotten is a great documentary on Netflix about food fraud. Super interesting.

Lots of restaurants pass off Swai as catfish too. Texas restaurant association pads our elected officials pocketbooks to not pass legislation against it. Most of the other southern states have.

Gunny,
Did you take Freshwater Ich (WS311 I think) with Dr. Baldauf? OMG, during his tests we would be sweating bullets and he would be down in front of the class laughing, watching the agony.

txags92 said:

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I remember back in the 80s it was somewhat common for restaurants in Galveston and Kemah to sell fake scallops made from stingray meat cut with a cookie cutter type tool. The easy way to tell the difference was that the real scallops had just a bit of grittiness to them and the stingray meat didn't. No idea if that is still going on or not.

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I was just going to post about this. In the halcyon days of my youth living on SPI we would go night fishing at a spot called the shark hole between the causeways. Usually we could catch 2 to 3 large rays, some of them big motor scooters.

We would cut the flanks outta them and sell them to a couple of high end, and I won't name them, places on the Island for $3.50 a pound, we were paid in cash or in one of the cases $5.00 per pound restaurant credit.

I worked on private, charter, and several commercial boats as well. During the early fall black fin tuna will school up thick behind deep shrimpboats. It was easy to catch 40 or 50 of them, same deal we would fillet them and sell to places for $4-5 a pound, they would serve as yellowfin.

Many a beeline snapper has been sold as red snapper or grouper.

If anyone ever ate the AYCE special of "fried flounder", it was anything but. Guys on shrimpboats in the fall would keep large croaker and whiting and fillet them out and hide in the freezer and sell those to places that sold as snapper or other things.

A lot of the stuff we did in the 80's was marginally or technically illegal, but it had been going on for years and went on for years. The Magnison(sp) was in place, but nobody really enforced it, hell we didn't even know the details. Somewhere in the 90's things got a lot more formal.

We would also sell tilefish as snapper or grouper direct to restaurants, I actually like tilefish better than most grouper, but back then nobody knew what a tilefish was or where they came from. We would get the same price as grouper, which aren't as common in TX as they are in FL or the southern eastern seaboard.

On the shrimp deal, very few places in TX serve gulf shrimp anymore and the supply is way down. I can tell immediately that most places are serving imported farm raised shrimp. No taste and not very firm.

Oh, and stingrays are great eating, chargrilled with some butter and lime it is a great meat, like a firm scallop steak. We ate them frequently.

Yes sir!
Who was the prof down at MCMS's Galveston that taught fisheries statistics dynamics that laid on the mattress on the floor in front of our class while he lectured because he had hurt his back?? Nice guy. Very passive.

Are tile fish as flakey as grouper?

aggie4231 said:

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I remember 20 something years ago went to a seafood restaurant in Port Aransas I had worked at previously. Asked what type of fish they used in a dish (can't remember the dish) server or whoever I talked to said it was tilapia. Definitely did not order that, and I think I've only been back once since.

Had to inform them that tilapia isn't Fresh Seafood, and not even native to Texas.

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I worked a semester at the Texas A&M Aquaculture Center out on Highway 60. I could have had all of the Tilapia I wanted which was exactly zero.

Depends on the business model. Quite a few rely, mostly on IG, etc. (If the chef has a TV show, there's a good chance it's junk.)

(Sane chains which require NDAs from their suppliers, which is why I'm not naming names.)

I've been told, my entire career, "we spend too much on ingredients/customers can't taste" by various, financially successful, restaurant owners.

Same way that soda companies sell billions of dollars of stuff which actually tastes awful, if the customer hasn't been conditioned to it/actually pays attention to the taste.

If they respected their customers, food fraud wouldn't be the problem that it is.

I respectfully will disagree on the amount of "food fraud" that is actually out there.
The fact remains simply that if folks go to a restaurant and get crappy tasting food, that word travels fast, and regardless of how much TV chef shows they do or advertising, they eventually close up.
Thats why the restaurant industry has one of the highest failure rates of business ventures … you either build a reputation of serving good food or not. If not, folks don't come to eat at your place anymore.
There are many restaurants across the country that have been in business for generations. They have accomplished that by two things:
Serving a good product, and taking care of and respecting their customers….. just like most successful businesses.

I think you're conflating "food fraud" with good tasting/bas tasting food.


Lying about a product either through omission or straight up is food fraud, good chefs and cooks can still take that product and make it taste good, probably.


Most people aren't complaining that their shrimp is from a pond in Thailand, it's that it is sold as gulf seafood. Taste is VERY similar once you season it up and fry it in peanut oil.

No I understand the issue about the fraud. On my first post I stated I traveled for a living and ate in restaurants about 200 plus days out of the year. Never knowingly knew of fraud…. but I asked about the food and was never knowingly lied to of what kind of fish it was or where it came from. I experienced honesty …and then I could decide if I wanted the food or not.
Like everything else there can always be anecdotal examples, or heresay of examples of food fraud but at the end of the day I don't have reason to believe it's as rampant as some would have us believe.
Is "food fraud" out there? Yes. Is it in the majority of high end restaurants, or quality restaurants in general? In my opinion no…..but I'm sure I could be wrong too.

Gotcha. Misunderstood where you were going.

I think I'd have to agree with your point that it's not overly common.

I do wonder about usda beef grades though at some places.