Small Bites

Per Se, Le Bernardin and … Mount Kisco Seafood?
That’s right. When it comes to some of the most exclusive tuna on the planet, Mount Kisco Seafood owner Joe DiMauro is keeping company with Per Se’s Thomas Keller and Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert, two of the country’s most highly regarded chefs.
The bluefin tuna is called kindai, and it’s farmed sustainably in the waters off Osaka, Japan.
Only 5 fish per week are shipped to the U.S. and the loin of one of them arrives at Mount Kisco Seafood on Thursdays. By Sunday, it’s all sold out — even at $68 per pound.
Yes, $68. This is like the kobe of the tuna world.

“They’re better taken care of than you and me,” says DiMauro.
The fish are raised by Japan’s Kinki University, and come from a sustainability effort started in 1948 as an experiment in growing fish after natural sources were overfished.
It turns out, because the kindai are fed anchovies, eels and mackerel by hand by the students, the tuna are almost mercury-free.

DiMauro gets 8 to 12 pounds of kindai per week. It comes via Litchfield Farms Organic & Natural, a natural-minded distributor in Connecticut. According to New York magazine, the fish even come with provenance, “documenting place of incubation, date of transfer from hatchery to open-water pen, water density—even its specific diet.”
“They’re farm-raised in the purest sense of pure,” says DiMauro.

And apparently, the fish is absolutely to-die-for.
“If you cook it — it’s a sin,” says DiMauro.
Even if you just sear it quickly?
“OK, if you just introduce it to the flame, but that’s it,” he says. “Fifteen to 20 seconds a side.”

Mount Kisco Seafood, 477 Lexington Ave., Mount Kisco. 914-241-3113.