Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura
Asian carp are big fish: big in size, and big in numbers. Originally imported to the American south in the 1970s as cleaners of ponds and wastewater facilities, they escaped into the Mississippi River and now clog waterways across the United States.
Easily startled by motors, they have been known to jump into boats, causing broken noses and black eyes for unwary fishermen. Some carp can weigh a hundred pounds.Fast-multiplying and with few predators, these fish aren’t just dangerous for humans. They have big appetites for plankton, plants, and even snails, the food sources of native species. The Great Lakes are especially imperiled, and millions of dollars have been poured into research and underwater barriers to keep them away. News reports treat carp sightings near Lake Michigan like hurricanes threatening a city.
But for chef Philippe Parola, Asian carp are an opportunity, because, by all accounts, the fish is a delicious invader. After being bled, carp meat is firm and white, and they are ridiculously plentiful: By one estimate, 70 percent of the biomass in the Illinois River is Asian carp. Plus, Parola suspects that environmentally conscious fish lovers might like to eat for a cause. That’s why Parola runs Silverfin Group, Inc., which last month started selling fish cakes made from Asian carp: the first time an invasive species has been mass marketed as food in the United States.
It’s a project several decades in the making. Parola was born in France during its lean, post-war years. “Grocery stores were not all over the place in France,” Parola notes. Fishing and hunting wild game was still a way for his community, in the countryside around Paris, to put food on the table. He even remembers eating common carp, a bottom-feeding fish notorious for tasting something like mud.
When he arrived in New Orleans, in 1981, it was the last few years when French food—and chefs—still dominated the American food scene. “Today, American chefs are doing very well on their own,” he says, in his booming French-Southern accent. Parola worked as a chef and restaurant consultant in Louisiana for decades, before he became interested in Asian carp in 2009. (During a taping of an episode of Jeff Corwin’s Extreme Cuisine, two carp jumped into his boat.) Parola’s passion for Asian carp seems fueled by disdain for wasting this teeming mass of tasty fish. The idea of expensive electric barriers particularly disgusts him. “Fish is food,” Parola insists. His other catchy slogan, which he repeats often, is: “Can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.”
But there have been some challenges to “eating ‘em.” For one thing, the term “Asian carp” carries bad connotations. Carp’s reputation as an ugly, throwaway fish isn’t exactly endearing. Though Asian carp tastes better than the common type, the association…
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