The table was set and I impatiently waited for our host to say grace before I lifted my fork to dig into the delicious food. One particular dish stood out in the sumptuous dinner spread and it was a large platter of “sweet and sour fish” that elicited a salivary deluge.
The restaurant - the Grand Emerald Seafood Garden, is a Cantonese joint that has been serving yummy food since my younger years - many decades back, and the sweet and sour grouper was my all-time favorite. We were invited by some cousins on our short visit home from Bangkok and when Cindy mentioned that the Grand Emerald was the place, I was most certain that this dish won’t be missed. In no time we were smacking our lips and gobbling down the delicious food. The dinner ended and I was overly satiated and satisfied with my mind fondly savoring the tasty grouper.
On our drive home I overheard my wife and her mom talking about their plans for a Christmas dinner before we returned to Bangkok, and sure enough they had the yummy sweet and sour from Emerald in their list. When the day came, I was tasked to drive to the resto to get the food that they had ordered by phone and that was when my appetite for the sweet and sour was dashed to pieces. I was told by the lady at the counter that the tasty fish in our order was "Dory," not Lapu-lapu (vernacular for grouper). She said that they actually tell the customer ordering the dish that the fish is Dory.
I have been around fish ponds in Thailand and the Mekong river that mass-produce this fish - Pangasius hypophthalamus, and I am well aware about the issues that hound the raising, processing and shipping of this fish, which have made me decide many years back to stay away from store-bought, processed Dory. Catching it myself in a pond that is clearly free from contaminants and pollutants is a totally different story.
Driving home with the packed sweet and sour dish on the seat beside me, my mind slowly took hold of the sad truth that the grouper fish has become too scarce and expensive for regular dinner dishes in the local restaurants that the Dory has conveniently taken over it's place. I couldn't think of a Dory-producing region in the Philippines so I came to the realization that the tasty fish that I just recently devoured apparently was a product of the polluted ponds of Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand that I abhorred and detested, and that this low-priced, controversial fish has finally invaded the dining tables of my homeland islands.
the sweet and sour dish from the Grand
Emerald's website
that's the Pangasius hypohpthalamus or Dory. A species
of catfish without scales and is certainly not kosher.
at a processing plant
filleted and ready for packing
the grouper caught in a recent fishing trip
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