Big tuna draws crowd to Japanese market in Arlington Heights

Bidding for the fish head started at $20.

The price went to $70 before Tom Osaki won the bid. As a sushi chef who caters to high-end hotels like the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton, Osaki considered it a bargain.

"It's the best part of the tuna," he said. Then he added, with a smile. "I'm not going to sell it. I'm going to eat it."

The head, the size of a bread box, came from a 400-pound bluefin tuna flown in fresh Saturday to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights.

A professional butcher from Japan also flew in to carve up the fish before a crowd of 200, many of whom bought chunks of the "maguro" to eat raw as sashimi.

Normally, tuna gets carved in processing factories, or in Tokyo at the huge Tsukiji fish market, but it is rarely done in public. Mitsuwa spent upward of $8,000 to fly in the tuna fresh, not frozen, and carve it into about 1,000 pieces of the freshest fish possible.

The butcher used a 2-foot blade that looked like a samurai knife to cut through the tough skin and firm flesh, so red it looked like raw beef. When he hit the neck bone, he used a saw to cut off the head, which was held up to the cheers of the crowd.

The fish was cut into five large sections, then sliced and sold as small servings.

The most prized part of the fish, the fatty, melt-in-your-mouth otoro found in the belly and jaw, was cut into strips and sold for $62.99 a pound.

Keiko McClary, a Japanese immigrant who drives from her home in DeKalb to get Japanese food at Mitsuwa, considered it a rare treat.

Her daughter, Debby Koenig, of Mount Prospect, turned away from the butchering, saying, "I don't need to look at that. That's not very appetizing to me."

Some other consumers are also turning away from bluefin tuna.

Because it contains mercury, the Shedd Aquarium advises people not to eat certain kinds of tuna, including bluefin.

After decades of overfishing, some scientists predict the bluefin tuna will soon become critically endangered. An international panel will meet Monday and may cut back the annual, largely-ignored limit on how much tuna should be caught.

Japan, the largest bluefin tuna consumer in the world, has called for cutting the quota in half, while the World Wildlife Fund has called for halting all bluefin fishing to save the species from extinction.

Some large European retailers and consumers have started a boycott against selling and eating the fish.

Mitsuwa store manager Masato Takai said he hoped international regulators and fish farmers would find a way to keep bluefin at a sustainable level. "People all over the world have started eating sushi," Takai said. "I think it's a great thing to have part of Japanese culture spread, but that consumption has kind of made a crisis for not being able to get tuna."

Mitsuwa, the largest Japanese supermarket in the Midwest, plans to carve and sell another tuna at noon today.

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