Meet the Star of Sushi-Con: A 400-Pound Tuna
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Sept. 29, 2024)
“It’s coming! It’s coming!” someone yelled. It was before dawn on a recent Sunday, and a dozen men in matching navy-blue T-shirts were waiting by a loading dock in Manhattan for the headliner of Sushi-Con, which bills itself as the largest expo of Japanese cuisine in the United States.
A truck backed into the brightly lit bay. The rear doors opened and a white Styrofoam box appeared, roughly the shape of a coffin and nearly as wide as the truck itself. Written at one end was the word “head.” Inside was a 399-pound bluefin tuna, a fish that when prepared as sushi can be among the most expensive forms of seafood in the world.
Sangsu Choe, a manager at True World Foods, a wholesaler of sushi-related products and a co-sponsor of the event, began waving his arms and directing. “Take it easy! Don’t rush,” he yelled as the men tried to move the box with a manual forklift. Several times, the white container, now more than six feet in the air, teetered and appeared close to crashing to the ground. Everyone shouted and laid their hands on it to steady it.
The eagerly awaited fish had left Barcelona on Friday morning packed in ice. It spent a night and a day in a New Jersey warehouse before arriving at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea, the site of the $120-a-ticket event.
Part trade show and part consumer-facing forum, the event has taken place four times since 2018. This was the first year it had been branded Sushi-Con. True World Foods was sponsoring it with Noble Fresh Cart, a start-up developing a direct-to-consumer delivery service for sushi-grade fish. The all-you-can-eat event featured over 50 vendors offering samples of their fish and other products. Though the cuisine is Japanese, the fish came from all over the world.
But only one was the star of the “Ultimate Tuna Cutting Show,” the main event where the bluefin tuna, roughly the size of a torpedo and with shimmering silver scales, would be carved up and served to the gathered attendees.
At 6 a.m., the box, placed on a cutting table on the Pavilion stage, was opened, and the fish pulled from its tomb of ice. These fish can weigh as much as a thousand pounds, but the Sushi-Con centerpiece was chosen for its quality and not just its size.
The priority for top-grade sushi is a round belly, indicative of a plentiful layer of fat. This particular fish was caught in June off the coast of Ibiza, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea, by the Balfegó Group, a fishing fleet with ties to the area that stretch back five generations.
Commercial fishing for the Atlantic bluefin tuna, the largest species of tuna, is highly regulated, said Youssef Meski, wholesale sales director for Balfegó. Fishing season starts in late May and extends only five weeks. While some operations use nets, hooks and harpoons, Balfegó captures its tuna alive and says it focuses on sustainable practices that stress quality over quantity.
The fish, once captured, are corralled into a pen and towed alive to Balfegó’s facility outside Barcelona. There, they are fed herring, mackerel and sardines, which are also wild-caught, Mr. Meski said.
“Each market has its own preferences. Europe doesn’t like fat. The U.S.A. and China like a lot of fat. It’s a taste preference,” Mr. Meski said.
The fish on the Pavilion stage was among 89 caught in a single day in early June, and was about 10 years old, he said. Its eventual death was swift.
“It’s harvested with a shot to the head. We want it to be quick,” he said. “A quick death, so the fish does not suffer. If it suffers, it affects the quality of the meat.”
After its death, the fish was hung from its tail and gutted right away. The gutted fish went into a tank full of ice and salt.
As paper bowls with various types of sashimi and sushi were laid out on tables around the Metropolitan Pavilion, the tuna sat alone atop the cutting table onstage, intact except for its tail.
By 12:30 p.m., the hall was crowded. The event would not open to the public for another half-hour. On 18th Street, a line of about 1,000 people stretched down the block to Sixth Avenue. At the front was Danny Blackmon, 71, who had come from Crown Heights.
“Living in Brooklyn, you know to get here early,” he said, laughing and peering down the block. “Things happen!”
Directly behind him was Matt McClain, 27, who had traveled from Tucson, Ariz., just for Sushi-Con.
“Arrived last night,” he said. “And we are probably sleeping at the airport tonight.”
After the doors opened for the four-hour event, the hall became packed, with a buzz resembling a rock concert.
Onstage, several people wiped down the tuna with ceremonial care. Then the moment arrived.
The countdown was done in English. When it reached zero, there was a cheer from the crowd, and then Kouama Yanta, introduced as “the greatest tuna cutter in the greater New York metropolitan area,” raised his machete high in the air and brought it down on the tuna’s neck. He continued chopping for some time. Finally, the head was removed and held aloft for the crowd, who cheered and pressed forward, holding up cellphones to take photos. The spine was removed and set aside, and the sides were quartered. The initial cutting took less than 10 minutes.
When that cutting was over, and the fish had been carved into several enormous pieces, Mr. Yanta stepped off the stage. A team of sushi chefs, each wielding his own set of knives, began the more precise movements familiar to patrons of Japanese restaurants.
After the main event, the Sushi-Con attendees dispersed, waiting patiently in long lines at each vendor. People ate standing up, the only option. The mood was festive.
Mr. Yanta, no longer in his white cutting smock, stood off to the side, his bright eyes gleaming. Beside him was his wife, Laura, resplendent in a purple dress. He is from Togo, on the west coast of Africa, he said, and has worked at True World Foods for 20 years. Asked if he enjoys eating tuna, he replied: “No. I cut it, but I don’t like it.” He prefers the fish he ate growing up, he explained, like tilapia.
By 3 p.m. the crowd began to thin, as samples of fish sat untouched on tables.
One group of people, standing within easy reach of trays of bluefin tuna and salmon sashimi, lamented that they were stuffed. Then someone pointed out that at a restaurant, each of these small pieces of fish could cost $20 to $40. This revived everyone’s appetite, and they began another round.
By 4 p.m., three sushi chefs who had been cutting the bluefin into sashimi onstage were finished for the day. The tuna’s head remained on the table, arranged stylishly upright, facing the room. Between them, the chefs — Kazushige Suzuki of Icca, Masato Oyamo of Sushi Ryusei and Kazutaka Iimori, formerly the head chef of Blue Ribbon Sushi and now a consultant — had 60 years of experience. They had cleaned their knives and placed them in neat rows on the table, each grouping with its own distinctive shapes and handles.
“You are not allowed to use other sushi chef’s knives,” said Mr. Iimori. “It’s like wearing other people’s underwear.”
Asked how the world of American sushi has changed in recent decades, he said: “Everyone has more knowledge than before. The fish is better, the fishermen take better care, the delivery system is better.”
“The sushi world has been elevated by the Michelin stars — and Nobu,” he added, referring to the celebrated chef Nobu Matsuhisa and his restaurant chain.
Mr. Iimori, who worked for 15 years at Blue Ribbon Sushi, is now planning to open his own restaurant, serving “old-school omakase” instead of what he called the pay-up-front, “sushi deluxe” modern version.
“Real omakase is when someone comes in and says, ‘Hey, chef, I’m not that hungry and I have 30 bucks,’” he said. “And the chef puts something together.”