Collar Me Bad

At blogalicious, we love us some sushi, but our favorite thing to order at the sushi bar strangely enough isn’t sushi at all. Bring on the live scallop, o-toro, iridescent strips of kanpachi shimmering like Venetian glass. No doubt. But don’t forget the hamachi kama. What is hamachi kama, you ask? Yellowtail collar. Along with the cheeks, the neck is the tenderest part of a fish, and big brawny kingfish sport collars filled with loads of rich, buttery white and dark flesh. Classically, the kama is spiced, broiled or grilled and served with ponzu for dipping. The collar makes you work for your reward; a solid session of chopstick excavation finds delicious morsels under bone and fin. Since (good) Japanese restaurants are breaking down whole fish relatively often, you’d think kama would be relatively easy to find on menus. Wrong. Collars are actually pretty scare. Our old reliable: Yama, at the shore in Ventnor, an unremarkable place in every way except for stellar food. Meant to snap a shot of the kama there tonight, but when it arrived at the table, looking like a mahogany zigzag slicing through the white plate, we totally forgot about everything but the fish sitting in front of us. So sorry. The stand-in photo comes from Japanese/Thai spot in Coral Gables, Florida. What is it with Asian restaurants putting photos of every single dish online? In this instance, like Brad Lidge, Moon Thai gets the save.

Photo: Moon Thai