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By Kristin SheppardThese days serious locavores can enjoy an array of restaurants serving up regionally grown ingredients. But if you’ve got a hankering for sushi, not even proximity to an ocean will ensure that you’ll be dining on local fish. So how does all that fish get to us in time to safely eat raw? On a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, actress Kirsten Dunst describes a meal at Uchiko in Austin, professing amazement that a landlocked Central Texas location could offer such great sushi. She may not be aware that restaurants across the country, including in New York and Los Angeles, serve raw fish that has traveled thousands of miles.Only a few decades ago sushi was considered an exotic cuisine, with many Americans afraid to try raw fish. Fast forward to 2016: Sushi restaurants are the norm across the country — even in most landlocked areas — and it’s not uncommon to see prepackaged sushi in the cold grocery cases, if not a dedicated chef on site making it to order.

Fresh food cargo gets loaded onto an airplane for shipping around the world. Image: Jamesshliu via Creative Commons. The increase in interest has driven a rise in demand for getting fresh seafood from the sea to plate as quickly as possible. Fish, like humans, travels fastest by airplane if going a great distance. Throughout the country vendors like International Marine Products Inc., have hubs in coastal and landlocked cities, which provide those areas with daily shipments of fresh fish within hours of being caught and flash-frozen, or ship them to other places. Now that vendors receive fish via airfreight and deliver them right to restaurants, gone are the days that restaurant staff must retrieve fish from the airport. Kaz Edwards, Chef de Cuisine at Uchi in Houston (a sister restaurant to Austin's Uchi and Uchiko), recalls his biweekly trips to the airport years ago where he would pick up fish from the shipping area and have to deal with all the red tape associated with international shipping.

Uchi's chef de cuisine Kaz Edwards.  “If they hold it for any reason, it’s done. You basically have to waste that whole box,” he says.Now the vendors take the hit when sushi fish is delayed, rather than the restaurants.When fish travels by plane, the two most important details are time and how it is packaged. That gap between ocean and plate should be as small as possible, and, while there are some variances, less than 24 hours is the goal. For sushi, extra care must be taken in how the fish is packed. doc truyen vua bep sushi onlineThe weight of regular ice results in bruising and degradation of the flesh, while dry ice is too extreme to keep fish at a consistent temperature. how much sushi for mercury poisoningEdwards says that slicing through ice-packed fish causes it to break apart and gives it a shredded appearance, so whole fish carefully arranged with insulated ice packs is standard.where to watch jiro dreams of sushi online

[When it comes to fresh seafood, how it’s packaged for travel is just one piece of the puzzle. Read how a coalition of conservationists and seafood industry folks is working to give consumers a complete backstory of their catch of the day.] Oroshi hocho tuna knife at the Tsukiji fishmarket. Image: Chris 73 via Creative Commons. Sushi-grade is a term that indicates a higher quality and is the reassurance many consumers look for when ingesting raw seafood. sushi takeout montaukSushi-grade can also be used to describe the way a fish is killed and bleeds out — and the traditional iki jime practice is used on the U.S. east and west coasts but not in the Gulf of Mexico. The FDA addresses all facets of seafood handling in the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance report, but the reality is that there is no grading system to determine whether fish can be consumed raw.

So one must assume a certain level of risk when eating sushi — there are no guarantees. Cobia crudo at Uchi.  But the reputation of a restaurant hinges on the quality of their food, and most sushi chefs go to great lengths to ensure the freshest of fish for their customers.Uchi’s policy is to remove items from the menu if the fish isn’t up to their standards, rather than try to procure it elsewhere at the last minute. The integrity of fish and how it is packaged is always important, but Edwards says that for sushi in particular it’s a key factor in determining whether or not it makes it onto the plate at all. “It’s just the reality of what we do,” Edwards says.The founder of Sushi Belly Tower and Upstream Foods, Michael Stember became a sushi obsessive when he was on the Stanford track team. Before hosting underground dinners and winning celebrity acclaim, he was an athlete running 80 miles a week, aiming for the 2000 Olympics, and needing fuel. As a student athlete, Stember wanted high-performance food that looked and tasted good.

“That was my mission," he says. "Can you achieve a sense of peace, not break the bank and still eat the best possible meal you can? And make it a fun experience for you and your friends?" He started his freshman year shoveling down plates of cafeteria pasta and chicken, but it left him lethargic. Protein shakes and energy bars, often pitched to runners, didn't appeal. "It was very far from the old world way in which I was raised, which is much healthier," he says. His mother cooked food from their Fair Oaks, CA garden and always kept a pot simmering on the stove. Stember wasn't about to adopt a fad diet. Hooked on sushi since high school, Stember discovered that raw fish was the perfect training food, with high protein, fat and omega-3 content. It's also easier for the body to process and convert into energy than cooked meat, which is hard to break down. He realized that he needed the fish without the sugary white rice and artificial sauces found on Japanese menus, but at student prices.

In pursuit of perfection He followed a driver who delivered seafood to a top restaurant in Palo Alto and asked if he could buy fish directly. Sweetening the deal with a Stanford track suit, Stember paid the driver $40 for a 15-pound king salmon, which he brought back to school and sliced with a butter knife. With a little lemon and soy sauce, "it was one of the better meals I've ever had," he says. Soon Stember had the best fish in San Francisco delivered regularly to his dorm. His teammates joined in and started organizing sushi dinners on campus, with artful presentation and a festive vibe. To maximize the nutritional benefit, Stember started pairing the sashimi with decidedly nontraditional sides: root vegetables, kale salad, or avocado oil. All of this took about ten minutes to prepare, thanks to fresh ingredients and simple seasonings. Stember has maintained this diet ever since, on the U.S. Olympic team and while competing professionally in Europe. In 2012, he returned to sushi dinner parties as a way to make a little money, hosting them in his loft in downtown Los Angeles.

Non-athletes also liked this way of eating, and he quickly attracted friends of friends and Hollywood scenesters. The laid-back multicourse dinners came to be called Sushi Belly Tower, with live music, specialty cocktails, and dishes prepared in front of guests. In three years it has traveled to eight cities and served more than 12,000 people. Stember has held dinners in Soho lofts, trophy homes in Miami, and on Edward Norton's private Malibu beach. With invitation-only dinner parties, the community has been largely private until now. This December, Stember opens his first retail outlet Poké Run, a restaurant in lower Manhattan serving poké, or marinated cubed fish. It's the culmination of Stember's unconventional career path, one that has taken him from dorm room dinners to cooking for celebrities. There was never a long-term plan, something he feels was to his benefit. "It's daunting to think about the big prize years down the road," he says. But it's manageable when you're just cooking for friends.