seafood

The Globe reports that not only do many restaurants around here not serve you the fish they claim they do on their menus, they seem to think that's just fine.

All 23 white tuna samples tested as some other type of fish, usually escolar, which is nicknamed the "ex-lax" fish by some in the industry because of the digestion problems it can cause.

Adam Castiglioni reports Legal Seafood will offer tours of its fish processing and testing plant on the South Boston waterfront every Thursday morning June through August for $7 (proceeds go to the Boston Harbor Assocation). No sandals or flip-flops allowed.

Richard Auffrey partook of Legal Seafood's "banned" dinner last night, explains that he came to trust Legal's Roger Berkowitz on why Legal isn't destroying the world's fishing stocks:

So, at this dinner, one of the most important questions to me was: Can Roger Berkowitz be trusted? Roger is intelligent, personable, witty and charismatic so it is very easy to like him. Yet he also had plenty of answers concerning sustainable seafood issues and they sounded reassuring. He comes across as sincere in his advocacy of sustainable seafood, desirous of promoting the best scientific evidence. Sure, he is also a savvy businessman, but falsity on this issue could easily backfire on him and tarnish his reputation. It seems to make much better sense for him to truly be a proponent of sustainable seafood.

If you've been wanting to try Plaza III at Faneuil Hall, you better hurry. The place is $175,000 in arrears on its rent and the marketplace's owner - itself in bankruptcy - plans to replace it with an Anthem lounge-type restaurant, roughly along the lines of the nearby Houston's.

The Boston Licensing Board will decide tomorrow whether to let the restaurant's current owner transfer its liquor license to Anthem, which hopes to open up fully by May. Attorney Dennis Quilty told the board today Plaza III has had "a very long bad run of it" - downtown Boston just couldn't support so many steak places.

Also tomorrow, the board will vote on a request for a beer and wine license for the Barracuda Tavern, a proposed seafood restaurant at 15 Bosworth St. - the site of the old and infamous Hank's Tavern, near Cafe Marliave. The proposal has the enthusiastic support of city councilors Sal LaMattina, Steve Murphy and Rob Consalvo. "There's three city councilors here looking for a new restaurant," LaMattina told the board.