Almost all "Kobe Beef" sold in this country is fake, and so is a lot of so-called Japanese "Wagyu." Wynn Las Vegas resort has the best selection of Real Japanese beef in the Western Hemisphere. Photo: Wynn Las Vegas
But the latest high-profile food scandal subject has been restaurants, which lie about what they serve a disturbing amount of the time, and are often on solid legal ground thanks to glaring loopholes in labeling laws as they apply to menus. Inside Edition publicly shamed high-profile New York restaurants — including one with 3-Michelin Stars — over false claims of serving Japan’s famous Kobe Beef. The same show found America’s biggest seafood chain left a vital ingredient out of its lobster bisque — lobster. Numerous studies have shown that the vast majority of sushi restaurants — nearly all — routinely swap cheaper and sometimes dangerous fish for popular tuna and snapper. Even in the birthplaces of acclaimed edibles, where food-loving travelers make it a point to visit, restaurants are rife with fraud. “Maryland crab cakes” on the banks of Chesapeake Bay were found to be made with cheap Asian crabs. On Florida’s Gulf Coast, the home of grouper, residents were rocked by a massive “Grouper scandal.”
It’s especially bad for those with specific dietary concerns. The number one fake substitute for red snapper is a fish so high in mercury it is on the FDA’s “Do Not Eat” list for pregnant women. The number one substitute for sushi tuna is banned in other countries and nicknamed the “ExLax Fish.” For those concerned about allergens, peanut oil shows up in places it never should — like inside fake “extra virgin” olive oil. And for those with religious concerns, veal is replaced with cheaper and often forbidden pork.
My new book Real Food, Fake Food (Algonquin, July 2016), covers the gamut of food frauds and scams American consumers face today — and shows why the world's greatest foods are so good they are counterfeited.
Most recently, a thorough investigation by the Tampa Bay Times found that so-called “farm to table” restaurants routinely lie about the quality, freshness, and source of their ingredients, passing off industrial feedlot beef as grass fed, regular produce as organic, frozen farmed fish as fresh wild caught, and so on and so on.
The good news is that there are still restaurants you can trust, that really do care about the ingredients they serve and the menu claims they make. My newly released book, Real Food, Fake Food, a New York Times bestseller, takes the first comprehensive look at the world’s most delicious foodstuffs, why they are so good, and how they are widely imitated, from supermarkets to famous fine dining eateries. In my book, at the end of each chapter, I give specific buying tips and warnings for Fake Food red flags. Having learned so much about the dark side of what is being served and sold, it has become increasingly hard for me personally to eat out, and I look at most restaurant menus with a high degree of skepticism and distrust. But today I’ve done all the work for you: as a 20-plus year veteran travel and food writer who has spent the past four years researching the food fraud topic, I’ve found some standout restaurants around the country that even I would gladly eat at.
These are 10 of my favorite places to eat Real Foods:
Quinto de Huella, Miami, FL: One of the most misrepresented products today is grass-fed beef. The phrase is fairly meaningless on store labels and even more meaningless in restaurants. Consumers assume grass-fed beef was raised eating grass, but also that it is somehow more natural, free ranged, and drug-free. It’s often none of those things. But at this new satellite of Uruguay’s most famous and acclaimed restaurant, Parador de Huella, all the beef is imported from meat-mad Uruguay, which has the strictest cattle ranching rules in the world. Like a Bill of Rights for meat, the law forbids all feedlot production, and every ounce of beef raised in Uruguay has to be free ranged, 100% grass fed and completely drug-free.
Island Creek Oysters, Boston, MA: Farmed salmon and shrimp, along with horrible social, environmental and chemical abuses in Asian fish farms have given aquaculture a bad name. But it can be positive, especially when it comes to mussels and oysters. Island Creek is arguably the world’s leading farmer of ultra-high quality oysters, supplying famed fine dining spots like Thomas Keller’s French Laundry with shellfish it raises in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a micro-climate terroir that is to oysters what Burgundy’s soil is to pinot noir. Island Creek operates its own Boston restaurant, using its own oysters, and it doesn’t get more “farm to table” than that — except that they also use New England partners they know personally to supply lobster, clams, cheese and just about everything else.
Seafood is an especially fraudulent category of food. But at Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston, you get the real thing.
SW Steakhouse & Mizumi, Wynn Las Vegas: Fake Kobe beef and Japanese Wagyu have been one of the most persistent restaurant scams for years. The importation of all beef from Japan was unconditionally banned by the USDA for most of the 21st century. Every single Kobe claim used to be a lie, but since the ban was lifted, “only” 99+% of restaurant Kobe claims are lies. You can literally count the restaurants in this country serving real Kobe beef on your fingers. There are a few more serving other real Japanese Wagyu, but this is still the most pervasive restaurant scam out there, especially at the high-end. The Wynn Las Vegas has the single best array of real Japanese beef in the Western Hemisphere, offering true Kobe, wagyu from both Ohmi and Kagoshima Prefectures, plus the ultra-rare Hokkaido Snow Beef, served at just four places outside Japan.
Grown, Miami, FL: People like to make fun of fast-food places, but in the real world, we all sometimes need to grab something fast while driving around doing errands. Grown is a new model proving that drive thru doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Launched this spring by former NBA Champion and All-Star Ray Allen and his food-loving wife Shannon, Grown is a reinvention of the fast food concept, catering to everyone from meat-centric paleo dieters to gluten-free and allergen sensitive customers. They serve a variety of wraps, sandwiches and main dish plates using grass-fed drug-free organic brisket, organic chicken, wild caught salmon and organic turkey. In fact, everything from the ketchup to the baguettes to the kale in the fresh-pressed juice is organic. Grown was just the seventh eatery in the country to receive full organic certification as a restaurant.
Cindy’s Waterfront, Monterey, CA: Seafood is the single most confusing and corrupted category of food in this country, with widespread fraud, fakery, and counterfeiting. If there is one place diners can check their cares at the door and order worry free, it’s Cindy’s. Operated by Chef Cindy Pawlcyn, a James Beard-award winner who founded Napa’s famed Mustard Grill and has been at the forefront of the farm-to-table movement for three decades, it is located inside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This, in turn, is the world’s gold standard in the field of seafood authenticity and sustainability, recognized by fellow scientists and the fish industry worldwide. Cindy’s closely adheres to the aquarium’s Seafood Watch standards — no farmed shrimp or salmon or suspect species here, ever.
Frenchy’s, Clearwater Beach, FL: The grouper sandwich is a local specialty on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where the fish thrives — there is no farmed grouper, the real thing is always wild caught. After the “Florida grouper scandal of 2006,” the five Frenchy’s restaurants have become the most reliable place for grouper fans. This was one of most infamous recent food scandals, and investigators found that tons of farmed, frozen and likely drug and chemical-laced Asian catfish was widely used in restaurants as a cheap substitute for the advertised fish. Even today grouper remains highly suspect, except at Frenchy’s. Owner Michael Preston has his own fleet of fishing boats under exclusive contract and can trace every fish from the moment it is caught to served. Frenchy’s fries its original version in seasoned butter, and also offers Cajun spiced, Buffalo, grouper Reuben, and other variations — all its sandwiches are delicious.
Real Royal Red Shrimp, rare and known as the "King of Shrimp," on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Half Shell Oyster House, AL & MS: Royal Red Shrimp is one of the few new foodstuffs I discovered during my research that I had never heard of. The King of Shrimp, it’s considered the world’s best, but is very rare, only commercially caught in three enclaves off Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. It is expensive to catch, soft shelled, delicate, and virtually never shipped — I’ve never seen it on a menu out of the region. The FDA allows 41 species, farmed or wild, to be called “shrimp,” but legally only pleoticus robustus, always wild caught, can be called “Royal Red shrimp.” The Half Shell Oyster House, a local coastal chain with half a dozen locations, is credited with popularizing them along the Gulf Coast and offers the real thing whenever it can get them, along with real wild caught Gulf shrimp and Gulf oysters.
Sushi Nakazawa, NYC: Sushi lovers should especially worry — no restaurant niche is as rife with fraud. In repeated tests, every single New York City sushi eatery sampled failed to deliver something promised. Certain fish, especially white tuna widely used in rolls and pricier red snapper, were neither tuna nor snapper more than 90% of the time. If you eat inexpensive sushi it is almost certain you will be cheated, that’s business as usual. To be safe you have to eat at places that source and fly in their own fish, and that is expensive. Sushi Nakazawa’s namesake chef was featured in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi before starting his own place, which got a rare 4-Stars from Pete Wells at the New York Times. How does the restaurant get around rampant industry fraud? Simple — they never serve the two worst offenders, red snapper or white tuna. They use only wild caught Atlantic blue fin tuna, sourced directly at the docks from fishermen in North Carolina with whom chef Nakazawa has personal relationships — he even visited to instruct them on how to properly kill the fish to make them more “sushi ready.” They source wild-caught salmon directly in Alaska, the world’s best provider, and the restaurant has a “Maritime Liaison” sourcing.
Halifax at W Hotel Hoboken, NJ: At the end of every chapter in my book, I give specific buying tips. In the Seafood section, one I offer is to look for the Certified Seal from the Marine Stewardship Council, the most respected third party auditor of wild caught seafood. This new eatery, just opened in May, serves exclusively MSC certified fish. Halifax is very transparent about its purveyors, all regional, including Sea To Table Seafood, Urbana Greens, Battenkill Valley Creamery and Alderfer Family Farm.
Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Ann Arbor, MI: Zingerman’s is famous for its ultra-popular deli and very high-quality mail-order catalog, full of curated Real extra-virgin olive oils and fine cheeses including excellent Parmigiano-Reggiano. But this full-service sit-down restaurant is a bit of a hidden gem — except for locals, who eat here religiously. The theme is American comfort foods and regional specialties, all upgraded through superior ingredients. I love BBQ, but very few places use locally raised heirloom pigs and drug-free grass fed beef. Zingerman’s Roadhouse does. Product sourcing is everything here, and they operate their own 47-acre farm, where they raise 50 varieties of veggies along with beef, pork, sheep and goat, all with the mantra “growing for taste.” When they can’t make it themselves or source it locally, no expense is spared on the finest ingredients — for the Southern macaroni and cheese they use the same Martelli stone ground pasta from Tuscany they sell in their catalog for $12 a bag, considered by many the world’s best.
Consumers are increasingly scared about what they are eating, thanks to a non-stop wave of high-profile food scandals and media exposes, from 60 Minutes to Inside Edition to Bloomberg News, many more. We’ve seen cheese made of cellulose (so called “wood pulp”) instead of milk, olive oil that isn’t from olives, lobster that isn’t lobster, and much worse.
Almost all "Kobe Beef" sold in this country is fake, and so is a lot of so-called Japanese "Wagyu." Wynn Las Vegas resort has the best selection of Real Japanese beef in the Western Hemisphere. Photo: Wynn Las Vegas
But the latest high-profile food scandal subject has been restaurants, which lie about what they serve a disturbing amount of the time, and are often on solid legal ground thanks to glaring loopholes in labeling laws as they apply to menus. Inside Edition publicly shamed high-profile New York restaurants — including one with 3-Michelin Stars — over false claims of serving Japan’s famous Kobe Beef. The same show found America’s biggest seafood chain left a vital ingredient out of its lobster bisque — lobster. Numerous studies have shown that the vast majority of sushi restaurants — nearly all — routinely swap cheaper and sometimes dangerous fish for popular tuna and snapper. Even in the birthplaces of acclaimed edibles, where food-loving travelers make it a point to visit, restaurants are rife with fraud. “Maryland crab cakes” on the banks of Chesapeake Bay were found to be made with cheap Asian crabs. On Florida’s Gulf Coast, the home of grouper, residents were rocked by a massive “Grouper scandal.”
It’s especially bad for those with specific dietary concerns. The number one fake substitute for red snapper is a fish so high in mercury it is on the FDA’s “Do Not Eat” list for pregnant women. The number one substitute for sushi tuna is banned in other countries and nicknamed the “ExLax Fish.” For those concerned about allergens, peanut oil shows up in places it never should — like inside fake “extra virgin” olive oil. And for those with religious concerns, veal is replaced with cheaper and often forbidden pork.
My new book Real Food, Fake Food (Algonquin, July 2016), covers the gamut of food frauds and scams American consumers face today — and shows why the world's greatest foods are so good they are counterfeited.
Most recently, a thorough investigation by the Tampa Bay Times found that so-called “farm to table” restaurants routinely lie about the quality, freshness, and source of their ingredients, passing off industrial feedlot beef as grass fed, regular produce as organic, frozen farmed fish as fresh wild caught, and so on and so on.
The good news is that there are still restaurants you can trust, that really do care about the ingredients they serve and the menu claims they make. My newly released book, Real Food, Fake Food, a New York Times bestseller, takes the first comprehensive look at the world’s most delicious foodstuffs, why they are so good, and how they are widely imitated, from supermarkets to famous fine dining eateries. In my book, at the end of each chapter, I give specific buying tips and warnings for Fake Food red flags. Having learned so much about the dark side of what is being served and sold, it has become increasingly hard for me personally to eat out, and I look at most restaurant menus with a high degree of skepticism and distrust. But today I’ve done all the work for you: as a 20-plus year veteran travel and food writer who has spent the past four years researching the food fraud topic, I’ve found some standout restaurants around the country that even I would gladly eat at.
These are 10 of my favorite places to eat Real Foods:
Quinto de Huella, Miami, FL: One of the most misrepresented products today is grass-fed beef. The phrase is fairly meaningless on store labels and even more meaningless in restaurants. Consumers assume grass-fed beef was raised eating grass, but also that it is somehow more natural, free ranged, and drug-free. It’s often none of those things. But at this new satellite of Uruguay’s most famous and acclaimed restaurant, Parador de Huella, all the beef is imported from meat-mad Uruguay, which has the strictest cattle ranching rules in the world. Like a Bill of Rights for meat, the law forbids all feedlot production, and every ounce of beef raised in Uruguay has to be free ranged, 100% grass fed and completely drug-free.
Island Creek Oysters, Boston, MA: Farmed salmon and shrimp, along with horrible social, environmental and chemical abuses in Asian fish farms have given aquaculture a bad name. But it can be positive, especially when it comes to mussels and oysters. Island Creek is arguably the world’s leading farmer of ultra-high quality oysters, supplying famed fine dining spots like Thomas Keller’s French Laundry with shellfish it raises in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a micro-climate terroir that is to oysters what Burgundy’s soil is to pinot noir. Island Creek operates its own Boston restaurant, using its own oysters, and it doesn’t get more “farm to table” than that — except that they also use New England partners they know personally to supply lobster, clams, cheese and just about everything else.
Seafood is an especially fraudulent category of food. But at Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston, you get the real thing.
SW Steakhouse & Mizumi, Wynn Las Vegas: Fake Kobe beef and Japanese Wagyu have been one of the most persistent restaurant scams for years. The importation of all beef from Japan was unconditionally banned by the USDA for most of the 21st century. Every single Kobe claim used to be a lie, but since the ban was lifted, “only” 99+% of restaurant Kobe claims are lies. You can literally count the restaurants in this country serving real Kobe beef on your fingers. There are a few more serving other real Japanese Wagyu, but this is still the most pervasive restaurant scam out there, especially at the high-end. The Wynn Las Vegas has the single best array of real Japanese beef in the Western Hemisphere, offering true Kobe, wagyu from both Ohmi and Kagoshima Prefectures, plus the ultra-rare Hokkaido Snow Beef, served at just four places outside Japan.
Grown, Miami, FL: People like to make fun of fast-food places, but in the real world, we all sometimes need to grab something fast while driving around doing errands. Grown is a new model proving that drive thru doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Launched this spring by former NBA Champion and All-Star Ray Allen and his food-loving wife Shannon, Grown is a reinvention of the fast food concept, catering to everyone from meat-centric paleo dieters to gluten-free and allergen sensitive customers. They serve a variety of wraps, sandwiches and main dish plates using grass-fed drug-free organic brisket, organic chicken, wild caught salmon and organic turkey. In fact, everything from the ketchup to the baguettes to the kale in the fresh-pressed juice is organic. Grown was just the seventh eatery in the country to receive full organic certification as a restaurant.
Cindy’s Waterfront, Monterey, CA: Seafood is the single most confusing and corrupted category of food in this country, with widespread fraud, fakery, and counterfeiting. If there is one place diners can check their cares at the door and order worry free, it’s Cindy’s. Operated by Chef Cindy Pawlcyn, a James Beard-award winner who founded Napa’s famed Mustard Grill and has been at the forefront of the farm-to-table movement for three decades, it is located inside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This, in turn, is the world’s gold standard in the field of seafood authenticity and sustainability, recognized by fellow scientists and the fish industry worldwide. Cindy’s closely adheres to the aquarium’s Seafood Watch standards — no farmed shrimp or salmon or suspect species here, ever.
Frenchy’s, Clearwater Beach, FL: The grouper sandwich is a local specialty on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where the fish thrives — there is no farmed grouper, the real thing is always wild caught. After the “Florida grouper scandal of 2006,” the five Frenchy’s restaurants have become the most reliable place for grouper fans. This was one of most infamous recent food scandals, and investigators found that tons of farmed, frozen and likely drug and chemical-laced Asian catfish was widely used in restaurants as a cheap substitute for the advertised fish. Even today grouper remains highly suspect, except at Frenchy’s. Owner Michael Preston has his own fleet of fishing boats under exclusive contract and can trace every fish from the moment it is caught to served. Frenchy’s fries its original version in seasoned butter, and also offers Cajun spiced, Buffalo, grouper Reuben, and other variations — all its sandwiches are delicious.
Real Royal Red Shrimp, rare and known as the "King of Shrimp," on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Half Shell Oyster House, AL & MS: Royal Red Shrimp is one of the few new foodstuffs I discovered during my research that I had never heard of. The King of Shrimp, it’s considered the world’s best, but is very rare, only commercially caught in three enclaves off Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. It is expensive to catch, soft shelled, delicate, and virtually never shipped — I’ve never seen it on a menu out of the region. The FDA allows 41 species, farmed or wild, to be called “shrimp,” but legally only pleoticus robustus, always wild caught, can be called “Royal Red shrimp.” The Half Shell Oyster House, a local coastal chain with half a dozen locations, is credited with popularizing them along the Gulf Coast and offers the real thing whenever it can get them, along with real wild caught Gulf shrimp and Gulf oysters.
Sushi Nakazawa, NYC: Sushi lovers should especially worry — no restaurant niche is as rife with fraud. In repeated tests, every single New York City sushi eatery sampled failed to deliver something promised. Certain fish, especially white tuna widely used in rolls and pricier red snapper, were neither tuna nor snapper more than 90% of the time. If you eat inexpensive sushi it is almost certain you will be cheated, that’s business as usual. To be safe you have to eat at places that source and fly in their own fish, and that is expensive. Sushi Nakazawa’s namesake chef was featured in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi before starting his own place, which got a rare 4-Stars from Pete Wells at the New York Times. How does the restaurant get around rampant industry fraud? Simple — they never serve the two worst offenders, red snapper or white tuna. They use only wild caught Atlantic blue fin tuna, sourced directly at the docks from fishermen in North Carolina with whom chef Nakazawa has personal relationships — he even visited to instruct them on how to properly kill the fish to make them more “sushi ready.” They source wild-caught salmon directly in Alaska, the world’s best provider, and the restaurant has a “Maritime Liaison” sourcing.
Halifax at W Hotel Hoboken, NJ: At the end of every chapter in my book, I give specific buying tips. In the Seafood section, one I offer is to look for the Certified Seal from the Marine Stewardship Council, the most respected third party auditor of wild caught seafood. This new eatery, just opened in May, serves exclusively MSC certified fish. Halifax is very transparent about its purveyors, all regional, including Sea To Table Seafood, Urbana Greens, Battenkill Valley Creamery and Alderfer Family Farm.
Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Ann Arbor, MI: Zingerman’s is famous for its ultra-popular deli and very high-quality mail-order catalog, full of curated Real extra-virgin olive oils and fine cheeses including excellent Parmigiano-Reggiano. But this full-service sit-down restaurant is a bit of a hidden gem — except for locals, who eat here religiously. The theme is American comfort foods and regional specialties, all upgraded through superior ingredients. I love BBQ, but very few places use locally raised heirloom pigs and drug-free grass fed beef. Zingerman’s Roadhouse does. Product sourcing is everything here, and they operate their own 47-acre farm, where they raise 50 varieties of veggies along with beef, pork, sheep and goat, all with the mantra “growing for taste.” When they can’t make it themselves or source it locally, no expense is spared on the finest ingredients — for the Southern macaroni and cheese they use the same Martelli stone ground pasta from Tuscany they sell in their catalog for $12 a bag, considered by many the world’s best.
Extra-virgin olive oil
Most bottles of EVOO are fakes, writes Olmsted. And this is a big problem because they're often stripped of the good stuff and replaced with dangerous substitutions.
"This is one of the most pervasive Fake Foods in America, reaching deep into home kitchens, restaurants, and supermarkets, and not unfamiliar to the government agencies supposedly watching over our food supply," he writes.
Instead of using the pure stuff, loaded with healthy fats, they're often diluted with cheaper oils like peanut and soybean—which is super problematic because both can cause severe allergic reactions.
That white tuna roll you love? Yeah, probably no tuna in there at all. Olmsted points to a study done by nonprofit marine conservation group Oceana, which took samples from New York sushi restaurants and found that 100 percent of them served fake fish.
"Consumers ordering white tuna get a completely different animal, no kind of tuna at all, 94 percent of the time," he writes. "Your odds of getting served real white tuna in a restaurant are about the same as hitting zero/double zero on a Vegas roulette wheel, which is to say, not good."Instead of tuna, you're likely eating escolar, which is nicknamed, disturbingly, "Ex-Lax fish," because it's known for giving people diarrhea for days.
Parmesan cheese
Real Parmesan cheese is a pricy delicacy from Parma, Italy. So what is most of the stuff we see labeled as such here? Olmsted cites a 2016 FDA study that found that products marked in the US as "100 precent Parmesan" are often cut with cheaper cheese or even wood pulp. He suggests looking for a "Made in Italy" stamp if you're looking for the real deal.
There are no standards right now determining what does and doesn't actually qualify as "honey." Weird, right? So places can sell honey diluted with cheap sweeteners, like high-fructose corn syrup, or illegal antibiotics and get no penalty for deceiving us.
Ok, this one hits very close to home. Olmsted writes that ground coffee is often cut with cheaper substances.
"Contemporary researchers have found twigs, roasted corn, ground roasted barley, and even roasted ground parchment," he writes. "Adulteration is more extreme in powdered instant coffee, where substances found have included chicory, cereals, caramel, parchment, starch, malt, and figs."
It's safer to just suck it up and buy a coffee grinder so you can get the beans instead.
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