Everyone (Who Cares) has Seen the Season Finale of Hell's Kitchen, Right?

I found this interesting, in light of Heather's signature dish, and the fact that I had incredibly yummy bass for dinner the other night:

G. Bruce Knecht, author of Poached:Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish was featured on C-Span a few days ago and was a real eye-opener, starting with the fact that there's no such thing as a "Chilean sea bass", that the name was a marketing stroke starting in the late 1970's in order to sell what had prior to that time been called a "Patagonian (or Antarctic) toothfish", a homely bottom-feeding oily fleshed white fish. The oiliness is why caterers, banquet managers and bad chefs everywhere love it; you can overcook it, leave it on the pass, park it under the heat lamp and it survives beautifully.

The toothfish off the coasts of South American are commercially extinct and won't come back for thirty to forty years; it has a lifespan of about 70 years, but doesn't begin reproducing until it's 14 years old. The fish that are left were young and the population left alive very small. Commercial harvesting takes place only the water off Antarctica now.

So maybe Heather, being a young cook, doesn't know this or doesn't care. Ramsay evidently doesn't care, or at least doesn't care to be in league with restaurants like Chez Panisse or French Laundry in Northern California or the Four Seasons and Balthazar in New York that have stopped selling "sea bass" until the illegal fishing situation has been sorted out.

(from the Television Without Pity message boards)

Guess there are some Restaurant Week participants who don't know this either. Or don't care. In any case, Zengo does an amazing job with Patagonian toothfish.

Except on second glance at the menu, what I ate was striped bass. Which is a real species.

Other courses eaten for Restaurant Week at Zengo: short rib empanada (thumbs up) and a coconut panna cotta (thumbs horizontal--neither up nor down). I wish I would have gotten the tres chocolates that Mer had for dessert--they looked amazing. Jake was underwhelmed with his lobster/shrimp ceviche. It seemed very watery, especially for a place that really prides itself on the ceviches. He was with me on the bass, though.

Mmmm...apparently non-illegal fish...