Chilean Sea Bass Fish

Bass dishes are bountiful on the menus of upscale independent restaurants nationwide these days, but confusion is also part of the trend.
The problem is tied to names.
Farmed striped bass," "Chilean sea bass" and "local bluenose sea bass" were three of the bass offerings found on menus in recent months. But of the three, only the farmed striped bass was for real.
Chilean sea bass' is a marketing name," explains , general manager of the Clearwater Cafe in Pasadena, Calif., and a former fish buyer for the multiunit University Restaurant Group. He says the fish from deep-water trenches off Chile being billed as "sea bass" is actually "Patagonian tooth fish . . . and it's more like a grouper than a sea bass
In a small number of cases misidentification has been shown to have been intentional, but for the most part errors result from miscommunication between suppliers and distributors, or distributors and chefs. Truth-in-menu laws have reduced the number of such labeling errors in recent years, but even the best restaurants still get tripped up from time to time