Rich and prized ingredient finds its way into crudos, tacos, sauces and more
March 21, 2017
Rich, fatty tuna belly, or toro, is considered the ultimate sushi ingredient, and has long been a staple on sushi restaurant menus. Now, this delicate and flavorful cut of fish is catching on with non-sushi chefs who are serving it as crudo, in tacos, in sauces and more.
According to Datassential Menu Trends, fish belly, which includes varieties like salmon belly, tuna belly, yellowfin belly, albacore belly and hamachi belly, appears on 1 percent of all restaurant menus, with 5-percent growth in the last year. That growth is largely coming from the fine-dining segment, where fish belly now appears on about 4 percent of menus.
“With the influence of Asian cuisine, the whole-animal push … it’s pretty prevalent,” said Dolan Lane, executive chef at Red Star Tavern in Portland, Ore. “You may not get a lot of product [from the belly], but it’s something chefs can have fun with.”
Crudo made with hamachi belly at Red Star Tavern in Portland, OR.
Photo: Red Star Tavern
At Red Star Tavern, Lane is making crudo dishes with hamachi belly, and sometimes striped bass belly. While Lane uses all parts of the fish for his crudo, he also reserves some precious belly meat for serving as a special, as an amuse-bouche or for guests he knows personally. At the moment, he is serving hamachi crudo with ruby red grapefruit, endive, castlevetrano olives and housemade potato chips dusted with dehydrated lime salt.
At Oyster Bah, in Chicago, sous chef Donny Farrell is testing a smoked salmon belly dish as part of an upcoming wine dinner. For the dinner, Farrell plans to cure the salmon belly in a mixture of coriander, fennel seed, sugar, salt and vodka, and then smoke it before serving it with radish, fresh basil and a blood orange gastrique.
“We’ve been saving salmon bellies for a while,” Farrell said. “[We’re] starting to play with it, see how they like it.”
Similarly, chef John Melfi of The Oval Room is serving smoked salmon belly with ruby red grapefruit, cucumber, hearts of palm, whipped horseradish, olive oil croutons and spring distillate. The distillate is a foam made from a non-alcoholic gin that Melfi describes as having the flavor of English peas, mint and cucumber.
“We usually have several crudo on our menu, and usually one of them is a belly, because they are highly marbled and yield a lot of flavor, and it’s good not to have any waste,” Melfi said.
At Outlier, in Seattle, executive chef Shawn Applin is capitalizing on the region’s abundance of salmon by serving beet-cured wild salmon belly with dill cream cheese, cucumber, shaved fennel and pickled mustard seeds.
In Hawaii, the locals eat ahi tuna belly at home sautéed or served over rice, said Ben Takahashi, chef at The Club at Kukui’ula, in Kauai, Hawaii.
“Locally, it’s everybody’s favorite comfort food,” Takahashi said.
At the club restaurant, Takahashi often gets whole ahi tuna and uses the fatty belly to make spicy tuna rolls. He also likes the flavor of other fish bellies as well. For example, he is using opah belly in his “fresh catch fish tacos.”
For the tacos, he cuts the belly meat into rectangular strips, dips them in a traditional taco spice mix and sears them until crisp. He serves the belly inside corn tortillas with shaved cabbage, lime crema and a side of guacamole and pico de gallo.
Doug Psaltis, executive chef and partner at RPM Steak, in Chicago, gets a whole farm-raised blue fin tuna from Mexico once a week and uses it nose to tail, including the belly. He serves as a special the “prized possession” of the blue fin tuna with fresh wasabi and black garlic shoyu.
Meanwhile, at Bibiana, in Washington, D.C., executive chef Jake Addeo uses fish belly in Moleche, his twist on the classic Italian veal tonnato, made with pan-fried Maryland soft-shell crabs, early spring greens and a creamy tonnato sauce made with slow-cooked and confited preserved tuna belly, as well as anchovies, duck egg yolks, olive oil, Dijon mustard, lemon juice and sumac.
