Miya's Sushi: Chi Chi Sushi, Guilt-Free

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Places To Eat

Published on Tuesday, 25 September 2012 23:53

Written by Laura Blum

Raw fish, the former cat food staple, is conquering the world. China, India, Latin America -- consumers across exploding markets want their bluefin tuna, and they want it now. With dire implications for our oceans.

If Japan doesn't have a solution, Connecticut does. Two-and-a-half hours from Manhattan as the toro swims, a New Haven restaurant is serving up variations on the traditional Japanese cuisine in a tasty fix dubbed "sustainable sushi." Miya's Sushi (68 Howe Street, 203-777-9760) is not only green, it's affairs seem quite rosy.

Just ask the customers awaiting a free table. In April 2010, Fish2Fork ranked Miya's one of the ten most sustainable seafood establishments in the country. Open the novella-length menu and see why.

There's Bad Tempered Geisha Boy Roll, "specifically invented for men who love big muscles. plump New Zealand green mussels with Thai pepper & scallions." Kosher- and halal-keepers will appreciate "Kiss the Smiling Piggie Roll," which comes with the qualification, "this roll contains no meat or pork. sweet potato, mango chutney & pine nuts."

And patrons minding their ph levels can chase it all down with Ultraviolet Kisses, described as, "ocean-salty, homegrown red aged shiso and sour plum sake."

Just don´t expect to find typical sushi basics like big eye tuna, yellowfin, red snapper or octopus. Chef and co-owner Bun Lai prefers the likes of catfish grown in confined ponds that don't "cross-contaminate other species or destroy the aquatic ecosystem around it, as salmon and eel farming does."

The prize-winning eco-activist came to the restaurant roughly a decade ago. It took some doing for the eco flavor to catch on. In
2004, when Lai first fileted the menu of seafood farmed or caught unsustainably, peeved clients allegedly took their business elsewhere. Luckily he had an in with the owner, Yoshiko Lai, a Japanese nutritionist who established Miya's Sushi in 1982 -- and who happens to be his mother.

Now he's optimistic about the emerging cadres of consumers who "care enough about our planet to change the way they eat." Even
the diehards are beginning to develop a taste for Miya's upscale sushi that "quenches people's thirst for exotic ingredients without depleting the oceans," as Lai recently explained during a rare lull in his demanding schedule.

Q: How does Miya's Sushi differ from your average sushi joint?

BL: The seafood at 99 percent of restaurants is farmed with a whole lot of pesticides and antibiotics. If you're talking about shrimp or salmon, chances are it's farmed, cause it's cheap. Tuna is usually preserved with carbon monoxide, so you don´t know how old it is.

Q: So you get what you pay for...

BL: Most of the seafood that we consume cheaply comes from foreign sources and we don't bother regulating it. The FDA checks less than 1 percent of foreign seafood. Of that, almost 90 percent fails inspection for chemicals that are banned in this country, and
 we're loose on what chemicals we allow.

Q: Like?

BL: You'll find fungicide so seafood like salmon can keep growing in incredibly dirty water. They're completely sick. Pesticides are used to lessen the impact of sea lice that are eating away at farmed salmon. The sea lice are attacking them because these are fish that are not supposed to be pent up; otherwise they're in the open sea.

Q: Farmed seafood sounds like the new tobacco. Which fish should get the surgeon general's warning?

BL: Tilapia is as bad as it gets. But the salmon that's generally available is hardly the health wonder you might think. It's high in Omega-6 fatty acids and implicated in heart disease. The American Heart Association tells people to eat salmon, but farmed salmon is high in saturated fats, which is actually bad for your heart. The salmon isn't eating its natural diet of wild fish, so you´re essentially eating bacon.

Q: How challenging is it to serve only sustainably produced and fished seafood?

BL: Very. Our seafood selection isn't that big. We run out all the time since (the Bridgeport Agriculture School) can't provide that much. Customers ask us, "How come you keep running out? You can find it anywhere!"

Q: Miya's is among a rising tide of farm-to-table restaurants that supply their own ingredients. How and what on your menu is homegrown?

BL: We have fishing ponds and boats on the Thimble Islands not from the restaurant. Half of the staff is scuba certified -- and I'm a "free diver" -- I hold my breath and go down as far as 25 feet. [We collect] all sorts of sea life that wouldn't normally be eaten: spider crabs, sea robins (which are considered "trash fish"), snapper and bluefish, which are incredibly abundant, atypical and absolutely delicious. We also dive for clams and oysters. And the seaweed we put in our miso soup, we dive for.

Q: What are today's specials?

BL: We have cow nose ray from the Chesapeake Bay. It's a fish that's causing a tremendous amount of damage in the Bay because of overfishing of sharks. And it´s totally delicious.

Q: So eating it is actually a needed service. What else should customers order to be good environmentalists?

BL: Silver carp is an invasive species in 18 states and it's threatening to make its way into the Great Lakes. No one eats it in the States, but it has more Omega-3 fatty acids than salmon and much lower PCB levels because it's an herbivore. Tiny dogfish is another good choice. The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has put it on a list of species that we absolutely should be eating because they could potentially decimate other species of native fish.

Q: Seafood aside, what gives Miya's a nutritional edge over stock sushi?

BL: The misconception about sushi is that it's healthy. Traditional sushi is made with white rice, so the nutrients are taken away from it. It´s like eating Wonder bread. It´s also sweetened with white sugar; a year ago I looked at the ingredients that Whole Foods is using for sushi, and its was corn syrup. So you're basically eating soda. Our rice is unsweetened. We also use locally grown ginger that's pickled in local maple syrup. You won´t find any sugar-sweetened, pink-dyed ginger here.

Q: Half of your sushi menu is vegetarian. Why?

BL: We have a billion people starving in the world today, and the way we're going to feed a hungry planet is not by feeding them animals. Animal farming is not the most efficient way of providing nutrients that humans need; plant-based food is. There's a direct link between the over-consumption of animals and cancer and heart disease. When we choose animals, we should be eating smaller animals and higher-quality flesh that have been raised or hunted in an ethical way.

We're not supposed to be consuming all-you-can-eat shrimp. Most of us today will die of lifestyle-related diseases that have to do with our diet. The irony is that there are so many people who are hungry in this world and we in the U.S. are dying from too much food.

Q: What's the outlook for sustainable seafood?

BL: The biggest change is that Walmart has stopped carrying red-listed seafood -- Monterey Bay Aquarium has coded seafood red, yellow and green. Blue Ocean also has a great list. Target got rid of farmed salmon. When the biggest retailers get involved, it helps the oceans because it educates the average person in a way that Miya's can never do.

Q: Do you still get flak from traditional sushi eaters?

BL: People will still walk out every day. The flip side is that we have lines out the door practically every night.

Q: What's it like working with your mother?

BL: Mom is still boss and as always I don't listen to her.

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