When I go to a sushi bouffe or any other sushi restaurants, there are always a popular dish in a menu. Which means these popular sushi items can be a risk to environment. Recently, many sushi restaurants have been going through struggles in decision making whether to stick to the Seafood Watch Guide or ignore it and serve what costumers want. While sourcing local and sustainable meats and produce is practically mandatory for restaurants these days, seafood and sushi, in particular has largely swum under the radar. Many restaurants believe choosing to go sustainable means less varieties and have to come up with new menus, because salmon, eel and yellowtail are red in Seafood Watch guide. Green – fishes that are abundant, well-managed, and caught or farmed in environmentally friendly ways. Yello - good alternatives, and red - fishes to avoid. For many seafood and sushi restaurants, choosing to go sustainable is a gamble. If customers are willing to splurge on quality sushi, who’s to tell them they can’t have bluefin tuna because it’s endangered? Seattle chef Hajime Soto is one of the chefs who chose to go green with his long-stablished sushi restaurant, Mashiko. Although he lost up to 20 percent of his business, he believed this was the right thing to do as a sushi chef. With many acts carried on from chefs and farmers whom shared the same idea as chef Hajime Soto, in the past two years, sustainable fishes have tripled and many companies have started to pay an attention. Chef Hajime Soto stated, "If this continues, an endangered species will no longer be in danger of becoming extinct and that means more fresh fishes, more happy costumers." From now, everytime I go to a sushi restaurant, I will try to go to local sushi restaurants over other restaurants with variety menus because just like chef Hajime Soto, I want to help sustain and eat fresh food.
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