The Fish That Got Away

Check out our interactive graphic of fish from the Gulf of Mexico and their sushi counterparts. You can also see a video of chef Brandon Fisch preparing a fish ike jime style.

Photos by Groovehouse

1. Brandon Fisch, formerly the executive chef at Yelapa, demonstrates how to ike jime a summer flounder. Also check out our interactive graphic on Gulf fish and their sushi counterparts.

Photos by Groovehouse

2. Fisch starts by spiking the flounder's small brain, killing it instantly. This ensures the fish doesn't experience pain or stress during the ike jime process.

Location Info

Map

Yelapa Playa Mexicana

2303 Richmond
Houston, TX 77098

Category: Restaurant > Mexican

Region: Lower Shepherd-Kirby

Photos

2 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare	0

Details

READ MORE
BLOG POST: The Roughest Catch: Ike Jime on the Gulf Coast, Part 1 of 4
BLOG POST: The Roughest Catch: Ike Jime on the Gulf Coast, with Video, Part 2 of 4
BLOG POST: The Roughest Catch: Ike Jime on the Gulf Coast, Part 3 of 4
BLOG POST: The Roughest Catch: Ike Jime on the Gulf Coast, Part 4 of 4
INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: Sport Fish: Explore an Ocean Of Possibilities
VIDEO: The Art of Ike Jime: How to Properly Kill a Sushi-Grade Fish
SLIDESHOW: Ike Jime: Gulf Fishermen Go for Bust with Sashimi-Grade Fish
BLOG POST: Ike Jime or Bust: One Texan's Battle with Gulf Sushi

Related Content

• “Emily Link: TUMULUS”
  April 19, 2012
• Big Night
  February 23, 2012
• Interesting Times: Celebrating Houston
  April 26, 2012
• Richard III
  April 26, 2012
• Mountainfilm on Tour in Houston
  March 29, 2012

More About

• Jason Hauck
• Houston (Texas)
• Brandon Fisch
• Sushi
• Seafood

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Dining Newsletter: The week's top local food news and events, plus interviews with chefs and restaurant owners, dining tips, and a peek at our print review.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Last year, PJ Stoops, a fishmonger with Louisiana Foods, persuaded a Gulf fisherman to process a few flounder for sushi, then brought the sashimi-grade fish to a handful of lucky restaurants in town.

One recipient was Jason Hauck, executive chef at Soma Sushi. Hauck served the flounder as a simple preparation, topping soft bundles of vinegared rice with the tender cuts of buttery, pearl-colored fish.

"These unbelievable flounder that had been caught out of either Louisiana or Texas waters," says Hauck. "It was the most amazing flounder you've ever seen come out of the Gulf. You've never seen anything like it."

The sushi made with local flounder was featured on the daily-specials side of Hauck's menu of authentic Japanese dishes made with local products, and it sold out quickly. But, says Hauck, "There wasn't very many fish." In fact, those few pounds of flounder were probably the only sushi-grade fish to come out of the Gulf last year.

Not that there isn't a market for sushi in Houston. Soma Sushi is just one of more than 200 sushi restaurants here, a number that grows every year. According to The NPD Group, American diners ordered more than 230 million servings of sushi in the year ending in November 2010, a 5 percent increase just from the year before.

In our backyard — the Gulf of Mexico — nearly 1,500 varieties of finfish flourish in the salty waters, waters that produce some of the world's most delicious seafood. But no one in the Gulf is processing the fish they catch for sushi. No one is performing ike jime, as the Japanese call it, on their fish.

At a time when locavorism is emphasized at every available turn, when the exhortative slogan "Stay Local, Grow Together!" posts up in every coffee shop and cocktail bar, the odds that the little pieces of snapper-topped nigirizushi you're eating came from the Gulf of Mexico are slim to none. Instead, it's imported from all over the world — Alaska, Hawaii, Spain and Japan.

Jason Hauck doesn't think the situation makes sense. "We would love to be able to get more fish out of the Gulf. Pristine fish do come out, but it's still not the same," he says. "Since I got to Houston ten years ago, I wondered, 'There's these great fish that come out of the Gulf, but how come nothing is sushi-grade?'"
_____________________

The fish thrashes and struggles mightily like the predator it is when 25-year-old chef Brandon Fisch removes it from the water, working its way out of his hand at one point and madly flopping to the ground. It's a fluke, or a summer flounder, whose skin resembles sand and glittering pebbles, and whose two eyes are both on one side of its fine, flat head. The fluke is determined to put up a fight.

That is, until Fisch spikes it quickly through its small brain with a needle-like silver pick. The fish's mouth gapes open suddenly, revealing two rows of tiny, sharp teeth. Its fins expand and stiffen.

"It's dead now," Fisch says.

Fisch was most recently at Yelapa Playa Mexicana, turning out some of the city's most remarkable ceviches, whose clean flavors he attributes to performing his own makeshift version of ike jime on the fish. Now, he gets down to work.

Ike jime is a delicate, centuries-old art form, and refers to the method in which the fish is both killed and stored after having been caught. The point of ike jime is to bleed out a fish as quickly as possible after death. The ike jime fish aren't gutted; they're left whole and pristine, a shining example of the skill of the men who processed them.

Fisch is demonstrating how the process works on the fluke we purchased only an hour ago from Korean grocery store Super H Mart. "There are three different styles of ike jime," he says. "But the most technical style is when you take the fish, catch it, pull it in the boat, cut where the gills are almost all the way to the bone, where you're almost de-heading the fish."

He cuts swiftly along the gills, nearly severing the head, but stopping just shy of the spinal column on either side. Its major arteries have now been severed, save for the tail, which is next. At the caudal peduncle, Fisch cuts through the spine but leaves the tail itself still barely attached to the flounder; it forms a handle this way.

This is incredibly useful for the next step: running a length of strong metal wire up the flounder's spinal cord to both destroy its neural system and create a pathway for the blood to flow out. As soon as Fisch removes the wire, he puts the flounder gently back into its slurry of ice water, and the fish's blood seeps quickly out of the hole left by the metal wire.

"You give it a runway, so to speak, for the blood to flow out the back," Fisch says. "Blood is full of impurities and all the things they've eaten. It's also full of flavor, but in red meat — not in fish. Not in seafood."