An in-depth look at the consumption of fugu, a Japanese fish containing a potent poison that is lethal to humans.
Paying the Ultimate Price
New York City is known for having some of the best restaurants in the world, and gourmands know they’ll have to fork over some serious cash for the best dishes. One of the those expensive gourmet dinners is fugu, valued by the Japanese as a culinary delight. The dish is so rare in the U.S. that the average price of a fugu dinner is about $300 per person. But before you reach for your credit card, you should also know this meal could cost you your life.
The Decidedly Odd Pufferfish
Fugu is short for Takifugu, a genus of pufferfish; it also refers to the dishes made from these fish. Most of us have seen pufferfish in documentaries, pictures, or in aquariums. These strange fish get their common name from their ability to quickly inhale large amounts of water and stretch their bodies out until they resemble a beach ball with fins. They do this to escape predators by surprising them and making it harder for the attacker to get their jaws around them. Most of us have seen the pictures of them all puffed up in a ball and have even seen their cousins the porcupine fish with the added protection of spikes pointing out in all directions away from their rubber-ball bodies. What most people don’t know is that the pufferfish has another secret, a lethal poison over a thousand times more deadly than cyanide.
A Horrifying Death
The deadly poison is tetrodotoxin, more commonly known as TTX. It is an extremely powerful neurotoxin that works by binding to the sodium channel inside your nerves and preventing signals from being passed along them. In essence, it silences the message system between your nerves and your brain, causing your organs to slowly fail. If ingested, the first thing you’d notice is a numbness in your tongue and lips, slowly spreading over your throat and face. You begin to sweat profusely and can’t talk because your vocal chords become paralyzed. Your heart rate begins to slow and your body temperature quickly falls, but the worst part is that, because TTX doesn’t cross the brain-blood barrier, your brain is working perfectly and you’re wide awake as it all happens. Death comes when the paralysis spreads to the lungs and they cease inhalation – you suffocate slowly without being able to cry for help.
A Japanese Tradition
Scary stuff, yet fugu has been eaten in Japan for centuries. The earliest evidence of fugu consumption in Japan stretches back 2,300 years and Buson, one of the country’s most famous poets, even immortalized the fish in one of his famous senryus:
I cannot see her tonight.
I have to give her up
So I will eat fugu.
Because they have been eating it for so long, Japanese master chefs have devised many methods of cooking the deadly fish. The most common ways of preparing fugu are as a thinly-sliced sashimi, simmered in vegetables (known as techiri), or deep fried as Kara-age. The skin can be served in a salad, and the fins of the fish are also commonly removed, battered, fried and served in sake.
Protecting the Diner
Yet for all of their experience in preparing the fish, it wasn’t until 1958 that the government stepped in to properly educate chefs in the proper ways of handling and serving the deadly fish. That year in Japan 176 people died of fugu poisoning and from then on all chefs wishing to serve fugu as part of their menus had to undergo two-to-three years of intensive training and then pass both written and practical exams in order to obtain a fugu license. Because the poison in the fish is found mostly in the liver and major organs, trained chefs can remove them and safely prepare the meals.
Fugu Comes to America
After the licensing program in Japan proved to be an enormous success, Americans who’d travelled to the island began requesting it at American restaurants. Eventually the F.D.A. allowed sushi chefs licensed by the Japanese government to serve fugu in the United States, but because the fish can only be imported via J.F.K Airport in New York City, the majority of the few restaurants that serve it are located in New York. Nippon, a NYC sushi restaurant, has been serving fugu in the U.S. for years and remains one of New York’s best-known fugu destinations.
Is It Worth The Risk?
With an average price of three hundred dollars per person, a price many find hard to stomach to begin with, the question of why one would pay that much for a meal that could potentially be their last remains. Still, when fugu season rolls around in January, enthusiasts in Japan and the U.S. begin making reservations at top restaurants to try the killer fish. Some gourmands insist that there is nothing like the subtle taste of thinly-sliced fugu, especially when a skilled chef leaves just a touch of the poison in the fish, enough to numb your lips and tongue. Fugu isn’t for everyone, especially those who don’t want their food biting back, but as the old saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste.
