The Japanese market in Arlington Heights has seen rare scenario over big tuna as the customers started bidding for the fish and the price went to $70 before Tom Osaki won the bid. As a sushi chef who caters to high-end hotels like the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton, Osaki considered it a bargain. Osaki said that it is the best part of the tuna.
According to Osaka the head, the size of a bread box, came from a 400-pound bluefin tuna flown in fresh Saturday to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights. It is reported that a professional butcher from Japan also flew in to carve up the fish before a crowd of 200, many of whom bought chunks of the “maguro” to eat raw as sashimi. It is told that normally tuna gets carved in processing factories, or in Tokyo at the huge Tsukiji fish market, but it is rarely done in public. Mitsuwa spent upward of $8,000 to fly in the tuna fresh, not frozen, and carve it into about 1,000 pieces of the freshest fish possible.
Keiko McClary, a Japanese immigrant who drives from her home in DeKalb to get Japanese food at Mitsuwa, considered it a rare treat. Some other consumers are also turning away from bluefin tuna. Because it contains mercury, the Shedd Aquarium advises people not to eat certain kinds of tuna, including bluefin.
Japan, the largest bluefin tuna consumer in the world, has called for cutting the quota in half, while the World Wildlife Fund has called for halting all bluefin fishing to save the species from extinction. Some large European retailers and consumers have started a boycott against selling and eating the fish.
