Zea's trout

rainbow trout = mountain tilapia

Because it's a chain.

Only thing I can think of is that it's easy to grill rainbow trout but not specs.

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Only thing I can think of is that it's easy to grill rainbow trout but not specs

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Leave the skin on and they are just as easy to grill.

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Why do they sell rainbow trout and not speckled?

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1) The public doesn't demand it or even know why preferring local fresh fish is more desirable to farmed fish, or even fish from clear across the country or other countries.

2) The restaurant doesn't care or know why they should either because it's raining money and not a F was given, and/or the decision makers and those ordering aren't really food people, but trained in a system, their system.

3) The market is so weak in its call for fresh speckled trout that it drives buying fresh local fish, speckled trout in particular, or even fish in general as being quite inconsistent, un-dependable, and difficult to source at times.

4) Price and margin with farm raised trout trumps buying local fresh speckled trout.

5) Government regulations whether sound or over regulating.

Any one of these drive this IMO, and most likely a combination of many if not all.


That being said, the issue for me is less in buying Louisiana Speckled Trout to farmed Rainbow Trout in particular as it is in buying fresh caught Louisiana Seafood regardless of the fish to out of state farmed fish, and creating the fish of the day entree out of what you can get your hands on at that moment in time, be it specks, redfish, flounder, drum, amberjack, etc. same thing goes for shrimp, oysters, etc when in season, which is also a principle people lack in understanding and why it's important, buying seasonal, not to mention local and thus fresh.

The trouble with places like Zeas is that they aren't geared toward that because of the reasons above, and them being a chain versus a local restaurant intent on buying fresh fish, and make it a point to do so in doing what it takes to source it which takes a little more effort than calling one of their big purveyors they always call for many or most other things and just ordering what they have consistently on hand and plenty of. Zeas is not going to rewrite their menu to cater to fresh caught of the day because it's not their business model and their staff almost surely doesn't have that flexibility to make those decisions.

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Specks in retail here are farm raised.

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Where do they farm raise specs at? Haven't heard of that before. Unless it's a new thing. Trout coming out of Mexico has always been wild trout from what I gathered. We used to buy truck loads of tuna out of Mexico and had a contact to buy wild speckle trout from similar areas where we got the tuna.

When is the last time you have eaten at Zea?

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Why do they sell rainbow trout and not speckled?

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Have you ever been to Zea's when it wasn't packed?

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Rainbow trout is also different/unique

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And delicious.

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Where do they farm raise specs at? Haven't heard of that before. Unless it's a new thing. Trout coming out of Mexico has always been wild trout from what I gathered. We used to buy truck loads of tuna out of Mexico and had a contact to buy wild speckle trout from similar areas where we got the tuna.





Texas. Texas has a huge farming industry at the moment.

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What farms in Texas? I can't find any info online about it and I know as of 2-3 years ago there were none.

I know texas has a few different redfish farms. Copper Shoals redfish farm and Redfish Unlimited are two that I have bought from wholesale. I think there were one or two other ones but all of them only did fresh redfish.

All of the wholesale fish processors in the city had to basically beg for speckle trout because it was so hard to get and the supply was inconsistent on it.

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Our guys are shipping them elsewhere for more money, leaving us to have to import.

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The only fresh local fish that gets shipped out of state is red snapper and sometimes grouper. There isn't a lot of fish caught in LA anymore. It's basically black drum, small amounts of flounder, yellowfin tuna & offshore bycatch (swordfish,mahi,wahoo,escolar,etc.), red snapper, small amounts of cobia/lemon fish, small amounts of grouper, small amounts of amberjack,etc.

Everything else fresh is brought in from the west coast (lobsters, clams, scallops, salmon, misc. fish) and South America (snappers,salmon,grouper,mahi,tuna,excolar,wahoo,eetc.) Fresh yellowfin is also imported from Asia(mostly Vietnam).