re: Zea's trout

quote:

---

Why do they sell rainbow trout and not speckled?

---

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.