News & Blog

When Fish Fly

By Abbey Road student blogger, Marissa Muller

This evening, I went out to dinner with a friend to my favorite restaurant in Austin. It is a sushi restaurant that is unbelievably good. If you are like me and do not live near the coast, it can be hard to find good sushi. The fish just isn’t as fresh, and sometimes you can even taste the chemicals that were used to preserve the fish. While I am not a fishing expert, Texas coastline itself isn’t even a hotspot for sushi grade fish. Catfish is not what you normally find served sashimi style. Altogether making it difficult to please sushi consumers like myself.

So, how do people who do not live near the coast get good seafood? Most often, the answer is that we don’t. We have to wait until we go on vacation where we will then eat only seafood to fill the void that we have. Some ingenious restaurants are starting to solve this problem for us though, and I thank them immensely for that.

image001

At the restaurant I went to tonight, they fly in the fish. Fish is flown from Japan, Alaska, the West Coast, and more. It is caught by fisherman, immediately put on a truck to the airport, put on an airplane, and then served on my dinner plate that day. Or the next day if it came from somewhere far like Japan. This might seem like a hassle to some of you. But to me, it is such a gift.

I don’t have to wait until a vacation to have good mussels or fresh salmon. I can eat my fish without the taste of preservatives in every bite. I get to eat what seafarers do from the comfort of my city. As you can imagine, flying fish does not come at a cheap price. But it isn’t all that much more expensive. Though I have not done a cost analysis on the fish, as a business major I was able to reason it through. Normal non-fresh fish must incur the expenses of labor, travel, storage, and preservatives. But fresh fish has the costs of labor and travel (more expensive- granted). So, it is obvious that they are saving money by not having to pay for storage and preservatives. They are still spending more because of the increased cost of travel, obviously. But, not so much that my thin college wallet could not afford it as a special treat.

I can’t help but be excited about the future of food after eating my “flying fish”. Maybe one day I can eat macaroons that were made that day in Paris, empanadas from Argentina, and Peking duck from Hong Kong all in one day. It’s a small world that is getting smaller. And my taste buds are very happy about that fact. Happy eating. And to all the fish that I will one day eat, I hope you have a nice flight.

Check Out our latest list of programs here.

Abbey Road Programs