Pacific Fish

What the plate gets wrong

The picture was generated, and these are its errors of fact, checked against the kitchen and the Lexicon. Read the plate with them.

• Tuna prints “TUNA (Bluefin / Yellowfin)”. Yellowfin has its own card lower on the plate, so this card should be bluefin alone rather than repeating yellowfin. Bluefin and yellowfin are different fish with different fat, and the plate prints yellowfin twice with two different flavor lines.
• Sablefish prints “Rich, Firm, Mild, Slightly Sweet”. Sablefish is soft, oily and velvety with a large silky flake, not firm. Sablefish carries some of the highest fat of any Pacific fish, and the plate's own Black Cod card, which is the same fish, correctly says silky and buttery.
• Black Cod prints “BLACK COD (Chilean Sea Bass)”. Black cod is another name for sablefish, which already has its own card on this plate, and Chilean sea bass is a different fish, so the subtitle is wrong and the two cards describe one fish. Black cod and sablefish are the same species, Anoplopoma fimbria, while Chilean sea bass is Patagonian toothfish, Dissostichus eleginoides, from the Southern Ocean.
• Rockfish prints “Fillet, Steak, Belly, Collar, Tail”. Rockfish is a small round fish sold whole or as fillets; it is not cut into steaks, belly or tail portions. Market rockfish run a few pounds, and steaks are crosscuts of large fish such as salmon and halibut, so this cut list was copied from the large-fish template.
• Albacore Tuna prints “Fiin”. The first cut on the Albacore card is Loin, matching every other tuna card. There is no fish cut called fiin, the block drawn is loin shaped, and loin is the thick top quadrant of large fish like tuna.
• Yellowfin Tuna prints “Rich, Meaty, Clean, Bold”. Yellowfin is the lean tuna, so its profile should read lean and meaty rather than rich. Yellowfin carries little fat compared with bluefin, whose belly is marbled, and the app's own Tuna card says yellowfin is lean.
• Pacific Red Snapper prints “PACIFIC RED SNAPPER”. On the West Coast, Pacific red snapper is a market name for rockfish, which already has its own card; true red snapper is a Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic reef fish, not a Pacific one. California allows several rockfish species to be sold as Pacific red snapper, while the name red snapper properly belongs to Lutjanus campechanus from the Gulf and Atlantic.
• Flounder prints “Fillet, Steak, Belly, Collar, Tail”. Flounder is a thin flatfish sold whole or as four fillets; it is too thin to yield steaks, belly, collar or tail portions. Flat fish yield two fillets from the top and two from the bottom, and steaks are crosscuts reserved for thick large fish such as halibut.
• Octopus prints “Tentacles, Body, Beak”. The beak is the hard mouthpart that is cut out and thrown away, not a cut that is served; the edible parts are the tentacles and the body. The beak is chitin and inedible, and it is removed with the eyes and ink sac when the octopus is cleaned.