Click the slideshow button to see photos of the restaurants and the dishes ordered
CLEARWATER BEACH, FL -- The Bay area is known for tranquil sunsets, sandy beaches, and of course, Florida seafood.
"Well, I like grilled grouper, fried grouper, I like sautéd and blackened grouper, and I love grouper!" said Rick Morrow, a true grouper lover.
"I'd expect to get some grouper if I was paying $30 for a meal," said Jonathan Wallace, another grouper eater.
Yes, people are passionate about their grouper.
As part of a special investigation, we went to 10 Bay area restaurants with our undercover camera and ordered a grouper menu item at every restaurant.
Lab results showed that 4 of the 10 dishes were not grouper and 3 were a much cheaper fish.
The 3 cheaper fish turned out to be pangasius sutchi, a farm-raised form of catfish.
And according to the Florida Southeastern Fishery Association in Tallahassee, there's a huge price difference. Florida wild-caught grouper goes for $11 to $13/lb. Pangasius sutchi goes for just $2.75/lb.
"All I know is that I have grouper, I buy grouper, I pay for grouper," said Costa Waez, the owner and manager of Acropolis Greek Tavern on 7th Avenue in Ybor City.
Based on DNA testing done at The Whitney Laboratory in St. Augustine, Florida, the Acropolis Restaurant, along with El Rincon Mexicano Restaurante on North Armenia in Tampa and the Gallery Eclectic Bistro at International Plaza, all served us pangasius sutchi instead of grouper.
At the Acropolis restaurant we ordered the grouper plaki dish.
"I pay for grouper, high price grouper, and I'm expecting to have grouper! If any of those companies send me grouper, and it's not grouper, how would I know?" asked Waez.
At El Rincon Mexicano Restaurante we ordered chicharron de pescado on the menu, which said fried fillet of grouper under it on the menu. Owner and manager Felix Lugo says sometimes they run out of grouper, but they always tell their customers.
"I have an order for all my workers that they're not going to serve nothing that's not the kind the customer asks for," Lugo said.
But state inspectors cited the restaurant in September of last year for food product misrepresentation. On that report, the inspector says the cook identified 130 lbs of fish in the freezer as grouper, but it was actually 130 lbs of pangasius sutchi.
At the Gallery Eclectic Bistro at International Plaza on Bay Street in Tampa we had the jamaican-style Asian grouper. Manager Matt Diunizio would not go on camera but claims what he buys is Asian grouper.
But on the FDA seafood website, Asian grouper is not a legitimate type of grouper.
And according to the state of Florida, it's illegal for a restaurant to advertise one kind of fish but serve a different species than what the customer ordered.
"The way an item is prepared or saying that it's prepared in a certain style does not eliminate the possibility of a food misrepresentation violation," said Alexis Lambert, the Division of Hotels and Restaurants Press Secretary.
Lambert says the state takes food substitution very seriously.
"If the word used is grouper, crab, Black Angus beef, that product has to be in the restaurant, in stock," Lambert said.
Two Bay area restaurants truly known for their great grouper grub are Frenchy's Restaurant in Clearwater Beach and the Hurricane Restaurant in St. Pete Beach.
Frenchy's grouper sandwich tested as the real deal, grouper.
But the Hurricane's grouper po boy tested as mahi mahi, a fish very comparable in price.
"We monitor it so close. When it comes in, everything gets handled. We put it on the scale," said manager Rick Faulkenstein.
Faulkenstein keeps excellent records of what's ordered daily and he says based on his records, they were out of grouper that day and there must have been a mix up on the order.
"The only way he could have gotten mahi mahi is on our fresh catch and that would be our fresh catch po boy," Faulkenstein said.
Faulkenstein also says he replaced all the menus that week and believes somehow we ordered off an old menu by mistake.
"You're pretty confident that when they order a grouper sandwich, that's what they're getting?" asked ABC Action News Anchor, Wendy Ryan.
"Absolutely," Faulkenstein responded.
And as for all the other restaurants that try to pass off a cheaper fish for an expensive one, the state says they will be punished.
"It is an issue that the department takes seriously. Misrepresenting food and misrepresenting a product to the public is a serious issue," Lambert said.
For the complete findings of our DNA test, click
here.
How did we conduct our tests? Click
here to watch a video explaining our DNA testing method.
Click
here to read a short biography of our researcher, Dr. David Price.
To read a news release from the Florida Attorney General's 2006-2008 investigation into grouper allegations, click
here.
A report from the Federal Government in February of this year points out how widespread "seafood fakes" are in this country. The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s report states that while seafood safety is the number one concern, seafood "fakes" are rampant, and you may be paying for something that you are not getting. To see the report, click
here.
To search the FDA list of approved market and common names for different types of fish, click
here.
