That's Why (U.S.) caviar is my dish

Global stocks of sturgeon have plummeted, but America is making up for the shortfall, says Barbara Durr

 

Few things are so evocative of luxury and privilege as caviar. Like Dom Perignon or truffles, caviar has long been the prerogative of wealthy and refined palates. But the delight of feeling the slightly briny eggs of Caspian Sea sturgeon burst on the tongue is becoming a guilty pleasure. 

 

Over the past 20 years, a combination of greedy over-fishing and pollution has led to a 90 per cent depletion of sturgeon stocks in the Caspian Sea, according to UN estimates. Despite being an eco-disaster in progress, the Caspian still accounts for about 80 per cent of the caviar sold in western Europe and the US. 

 

Moreover, lax control over Caspian caviar production in the past decade has resulted in uneven quality and, despite restrictions, lots of smuggling and poaching. With the US caviar market estimated at an annual total of 120 metric tonnes and 80 of those imported, it has been a bootleggers’ heaven. 

 

But, since controls on imported caviar went into place in the US four years ago, US authorities have cracked down. Three majors cases of caviar smuggling have led to convictions, jail terms and fines. Now come some enterprising Americans. 

 

In recent years, a handful of US fisheries have begun to produce some surprisingly high-quality caviars and roes, and their products are making inroads into fine restaurants, such as Oceana in New York and Jardinière in San Francisco, and appearing on elite home dinner tables. While caviar can only be called caviar in France if it comes from a sturgeon, the Americans – always looser in linguistic definitiveness – allow the eggs of virtually any pregnant fish to be called caviar if the name of the fish is also placed on the label, as in “salmon caviar” or “whitefish caviar”.

 

Europeans may laugh up their sleeves and turn up their noses at the thought of American caviar, but US caviar production in the late 19th century was as prolific as the sturgeon once were in American rivers and lakes. Caviar, then, was the common man’s hit of protein, not a connoisseur’s delicacy, and given away in bars, just as pretzels are today. But the Americans proved no better at managing their sturgeon than the Russians have been, and the fish were depleted. 

 

Caviar, as we know it, became costly and coveted in the 1950s when it was imported from Russia and Iran. Now, with fish stocks somewhat recovered, Americans can draw on a few of eight native US sturgeon that are not endangered or threatened. One is the American hackleback sturgeon (also known as the shovelnose) that produces a roe comparable to Caspian osetra. It can still be fished wild from US rivers mostly the Mississippi and Missouri, where it is relatively plentiful. 

 

More eco-conscious entrepreneurs have begun farming the native US white sturgeon, and another primitive fish, the paddlefish, also called spoonbilled catfish, that produces a roe remarkably similar to that of the sturgeon. To test just how well the American production measured up to a discerning non-American palate, we arranged a tasting of various American caviars with chef Joël Antunes, a prize-winning Frenchman with his own eponymous restaurant, Joël, in Atlanta. 

 

We used a Russian beluga from a reputable vendor, Brown Trading, as a comparison. Of the four US caviars, three from American sturgeon and one from paddlefish, Antunes liked “Walter’s Caviar” from Howell Boone in Darien, Georgia. While a bit salty for him, Antunes praised the texture of its small, dark-grey eggs.

 

Boone, a life-long fisherman, first started making caviar about 20 years ago, having bought the processing recipe from Robin Campbell of Scotland for $10,000. He began using Atlantic sturgeon, but several years ago these were placed on the endangered list and put off-limits by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He is now supplied by a few select hackleback fishermen along the Missouri River to whom he has taught the process. The product is of very high quality and graces the tables of media mogul Ted Turner and former president Jimmy Carter. 
 

The farmed white sturgeon caviar, marketed as Sterling Caviar from Stolt Sea Farm in California, got less than a rave from Antunes. He didn’t care for the texture or the aftertaste. He rejected two other caviars from a Philadelphia vendor, one of hackleback and another of wild paddlefish, as too bitter and acidic. 

 

For Mark Federman, a New York caviar retailer, Caspian Sea caviar is superior, whether it comes from Russia or Iran, but he cautions that its quality depends on the vendor. Chuck Edwards, sales and marketing manager of Stolt Sea Farm, a subsidiary of the Norwegian company Stolt-Nielson, says each species of sturgeon has different culinary characteristics, and within one species some flavour notes can vary from fish to fish.

 

Rick Moonen, the chef-owner at Oceana, is a recent advocate of American caviar. About 18 months ago, he says, he was “blown away” by the farmed paddlefish caviar of Osage Farms, in Illinois, the Sterling Caviar from Stolt Farm, a farmed salmon caviar from New Jersey, and a farmed rainbow trout caviar from the Sunburst Trout Company in North Carolina. He says: “In a few years, we are going to be exporting caviar to the Russians.” He thinks this is because an increasing amount of American caviar is being produced from farmed fish.

 

Antunes says that in 20 years most fish will probably be farmed. Ellen Pikitch, a marine biologist with the Seafood Choices Alliance, recently returned from the Caspian where she concluded it would take 40 years for stocks of Caspian sturgeon, and is getting out its message to US consumers, which she sums up as: “You should think twice about the choices you make to eat.”

 

Guilt is effective. For what does a chef say to the customer who comes in and says: “I don’t want to eat endangered species.” The answer? “Well, we have some lovely American caviar from farmed fish.”