Carp crudo at Virago
As we peruse the cocktail menu, our server approaches to tell us about the nightly specials. “Today’s fresh catch is carp,” she says.
Excuse me, did you say carp?
She did. Dinner that evening was at Saffire, the semi-casual, semi-upscale restaurant in The Factory at Franklin. Much of the menu focuses on seasonal local foods prepared Southern style, but a fair portion of the Saffire menu is composed of oysters and other saltwater staples of Gulf Coast cuisine, influenced by owner Tom Morales’ time in Destin, Fla., working in commercial fishing. This is not a restaurant where I expected to find carp being served.
I didn’t order the fish, but when executive chef Jason La Iaconna stopped by our table to ask how my friend and I were enjoying our food, I asked about it. I had many questions. Was this some special saltwater carp I’d never heard of? (Carp is a freshwater fish.) Aren’t koi and goldfish carp? (Technically, yes.) Certainly, the carp the restaurant was serving wasn’t the carp I’d seen in YouTube videos, jumping out of the water and hitting boaters and skiers in the heads. Not the ones that were essentially the kudzu of the rivers, imported from Asia and taking over the Great Lakes, right?
“The carp we serve is local, wild-caught carp from the Tennessee River,” La Iaconna says. But isn’t carp a trash fish, I ask. “It’s a common misconception that the carp here are trash fish, because they were imported to clean catfish ponds and because they’re considered invasive,” he explains, “but carp is actually delicious and very similar to tilapia or cod. They’re a very clean fish, but very bony. A lot of chefs don’t want to work with carp because of the bones, not because of the taste.”
Saffire isn’t the only Nashville-area restaurant that has tried carp. It’s been served at Holland House, Butcher & Bee, Rudie’s Seafood and Sausage, and Little Octopus as well. No restaurant has added it to the menu permanently, however.
The silver and bighead carp are the most common of the “Asian carp” found in Tennessee waterways. (All carp originated in Asia, but there are now carp considered native in parts of Europe.) The fish were imported in the 1970s to control vegetation in catfish farm ponds in the Mississippi Delta. Massive flooding in the 1990s allowed the carp to escape the farms and migrate up the Mississippi River and into the Great Lakes, as well as into tributaries of the Mississippi such as the Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee rivers.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency lists carp as an invasive species because the fish consume the vegetation that makes up the habitat of native fish and waterfowl, and also because they are voracious consumers of the algae and zooplankton that make up the diet of other native fish species that are the feeder fish for many sport and food fish. The carp are also prolific breeders that are simply crowding out the natives everywhere they’ve migrated. As they’ve moved east from the Mississippi River into Kentucky and Tennessee, they’ve taken up residence in Lake Barkley, Kentucky Lake and the Cumberland River and have also been spotted in Old Hickory Lake.
Not only is there a biological and environmental concern that this fish might choke out the population of native species, but also a concern for tourism, as the fish threaten the sportfishing industry and recreational watersports. Bass, crappie, buffalo and paddlefish are all fish whose food and habitat are being consumed by the carp and are very popular fish for sportfishing. The silver carp is the infamous jumping fish that is easily spooked by boat motors; there have been alarming reports of leaping carp injuring boaters and skiers in collisions. Over the past 10 years, TWRA and commercial and sportfishermen have noticed that the population of carp has risen.
“Most fishermen are concerned about the increase,” says Steve McCadams, a fishing guide in Paris, Tenn., who writes a fishing report for Kentucky Lake. “We haven’t experienced a problem yet, but sportfishing has declined in northern states and areas closer to the Mississippi.” In portions of the Illinois River, it is estimated that carp constitute as much as 95 percent of the biomass.
Their perception as trash fish in the United States comes from confusion with the common carp (or European carp), which are bottom feeders that have an unpleasant (or “fishy”) taste. Asian carp, on the other hand, are considered to have a pleasant, mild flavor; they’re top-water filter feeders that consume food through their gills, which filters out any pollution. Regardless, they’re still considered a pest, and despite efforts to market the fish as “Kentucky tuna” and “silverfin,” there’s little commercial market for it.
The low consumer demand for the Asian carp teeming in American waterways translates into a low incentive to fish for them, as well. Though harvested carp has been processed and used for fish sticks and imitation crab for human consumption, as well as for pet food and fertilizer, the price per pound it fetches is extremely low (generally 10 cents) as opposed to 50 cents a pound for more desirable fish such as buffalo or catfish.
In culinary terms, the anti-carp bias seems quite unwarranted. Though it is technically a pest because of its ability to overtake an ecosystem, the fish is eaten and enjoyed all over the world, particularly in China and other parts of Asia, where it is farmed. According to Dr. Lan Chi “Lula” Luu — a nutritionist and educator as well as co-owner of FIn Gourmet Foods, a carp processor in Paducah, Ky. — Asian carp are actually quite nutritious.
Asian carp ranks among the highest of all fish in dietary protein and omega-3 fatty acids; only wild-caught salmon is higher in protein. Because of its diet — top-water plankton and vegetation instead of other fish — it is virtually free of mercury and lead. But it’s difficult to process because of the bones, which will clog a traditional deboner. The carp’s bones as well as its incredibly tough skin (used in other parts of the world as leather) also prevent it from being served whole on a plate, the way many chefs prefer to serve fresh fish.
Luu is heavily invested in carp. She and her partner, Dr. John Crilly, started what has become FIn Gourmet Foods (the letters F and I are capitalized as a nod to the common abbreviation for fishery) in 2010 while based in Louisiana. The business was formed to provide work and revenue for the largely Vietnamese fishermen on the Louisiana coast, whose livelihoods were threatened by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. FIn brought the carp harvest down from Kentucky to the Louisiana processing plants to keep the fishermen busy, but soon realized the plan wasn’t feasible. She says that after run-ins with organized crime and fishermen and fisheries that preferred to take money from BP instead of processing the carp (which was more difficult to process than fish and shrimp from the Gulf), the duo almost gave up.
“After losing thousands of pounds of fish when we were kicked out of a cold storage unit, we were really discouraged,” Luu says, “but creating a market for carp was really important to the livelihoods of the fishermen we worked with in Kentucky. They urged us not to give up.” So the operation was moved to Ledbetter, just outside Paducah. Luu now considers it a personal mission to make carp a desirable food source in the U.S. because of its enormous supply, its health benefits, and the environmental responsibility of helping to create a demand to fish for carp.
“We have an extensive research and development program to make the carp easier to serve,” Luu notes, “including fillets and already-prepared frozen items like fish tots and smoked ribs.” FIn has developed patented processes to debone the fish to create fillets that are desirable to higher-end restaurants, and an all-natural, waterless process to create surimi, the Japanese-style fish paste that is used to make imitation crab, among other items. The processor utilizes all parts of the fish; what’s not used for human consumption is processed for fish meal and fertilizer. At the Ledbetter facility, FIn continually focuses on developing more ways to make the carp a desirable fish for American consumers.
Back in Middle Tennessee, Chef La Iaconna is already a fan, perhaps even an evangelist. Among the reasons he likes the fish is that it’s local, wild-caught and sustainable — it’s environmentally responsible to consume it. The fish reproduces three times per year, with about a quarter-million fish maturing from each spawn. There’s virtually no chance that demand will ever outpace supply, even as more people catch and process it.
Overcoming the bias against the carp here has been a challenge, but one La Iaconna faces with enthusiasm. At a recent tasting, the chef prepared the fish six different ways: ceviche, sashimi, deep-fried in a batter made from carp (carp-encrusted carp), smoked ribs, pan-seared and oven-baked. Diners said they enjoyed every preparation, but in particular they marveled at the ceviche and ribs. Not a hint of “fishiness,” they commented, with a flavor unlike any other freshwater fish they’d ever tasted. The cooked flesh was firm and flaky, its appearance completely clean and white.
The carp may be an easier sell for folks accustomed to saltwater fish, however. Fans of freshwater fish such as catfish and crappie remain dubious. “Personally, I don’t like them,” says McCadams, “but I’ll support any action to prevent their spread.”
