On Saturday I posted about sushi restaurant Sinju and Guido Rahr who was banned from the restaurant after; objecting to the endangered Blue Fin that was on Sinju's menu. Go ahead and click that link, I'll wait for you to catch up - if you aren't already.
This comes from the Atlantic, and was posted yesterday.Though it seems Sinju and it's owners aren't talking. First rule of Blue Fin and all that.
Guido Rahr of the Wild Salmon Center, is more than willing to talk.
When my first post on this went live Saturday, I got a tweet that to sum it up - this guy was a tool and supported what Sinju did. Why I don't fully agree with that, and on some level there could have been a billion other ways to avoid the bad press and make everyone happy. They chose not to do this (as of this writing), so Mr. Rahr is going to keep talking.
Keep in mind, we're only getting one side of said story here. But let's get started shall we? It started out innocent enough, when he inquired about the breed - Atlantic or Pacific? When he was told that it was of course, Atlantic Blue Fin he had to respond.
In what he insists was a diplomatic manner, Rahr said that he recommended that the restaurant consider not serving Atlantic bluefin. "I said it really politely and more in the sense of, 'I'm a regular customer and I'm concerned. You really ought to think twice about doing this—especially in Portland where we take sustainability seriously,'" he told me in a telephone interview.
Emphasis is all mine, baby..all mine!
Erm, where were we?
That's right, diplomatic and all that.
Then according him, returned the next day and dropped off packet of information on the Blue Fin and how it's being fished to extinction. He returned a month or so later, and was told that he wasn't welcome - and that:
"She[the hostess]said the staff were afraid to serve me,"
According to the rest of the article, Mr. Chen who heads up the whole thing - hasn't replied to the email Rahr sent. The Atlantic tried to contact him via phone and was successful (sorta),he told the Atlantic to email him thier questions, and (Spoiler Alert!) he has yet to return that email as well. This is a bit surprising to me. I mean, wouldn't you want to now, nip this in the bud before it got any further?
Maybe Mr. Chen thinks that if he ignores his inbox enough - this will all go away and he can keep serving a dieing species.
Because hey! Endangered never tasted so good!
Of course, we've still only got one side of this story - and until Mr. Chen reverses his rectal/cranial inversion we'll only have one side of this he said/she said. I learned long ago, that you can't ignore something long enough for it to just 'go away'. And of course; I'm sure we haven't heard the last from Mr. Rahr yet either.
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