Kuraoka says he supplies only 30 establishments. The company, whose president Nobuyoshi Kuraoka owns Restaurant Nippon in New York, then distributes it to “member” Japanese restaurants around the country, including Sushi Taro and Kaz Sushi Bistro. Food and Drug Administration has approved only one supplier, Wako International Corp., to import tora-fugu. You have a far greater chance of getting sick from salmonella in an undercooked burger. As far as anyone I spoke to knows, nobody has ever died of Japanese tora-fugu poisoning in the U.S. “The fish they import is 100 percent safe,” says Kaz Sushi Bistro chef and owner Kaz Okochi. is butchered in Japan and the toxins are removed before the fish ever hits American soil. The lesser-known truth is that all tora-fugu in the U.S. There is no known antidote.īut your sushi chef doesn’t really hold your fate in his hands, at least in this country. One wrong cut could result in poisoning, causing numbness and tingling in the victim’s mouth, trouble breathing, dizziness, paralysis, and ultimately, death. The organs-primarily the liver and female eggs-contain tetrodotoxin, which is reportedly at least 1,000 times more deadly than cyanide. It is rare and expensive, but the main appeal, for American thrill-seeking foodies, is its aura of danger. There are more than 100 species of puffer fish, including some found in the mid-Atlantic, but the Japanese tora-fugu or tiger puffer fish is considered the most delicious-and most poisonous. area-Sushi Taro and Kaz Sushi Bistro-serve tora-fugu, which is in season from mid-December through March. The meal finishes with a fugu hot pot and then an umami-rich egg drop porridge with Japanese greens made with a fugu broth. Over the course of the three-and-a-half-hour dinner, there’s also fried fugu, which requires you to gnaw the meat around the bony frame of the fish like chicken wings. The raw, almost transluscent fish is accompanied by a grilled fugu tail-infused sake with an aroma of char and fish that fills your nostrils before you even take a sip of the hot liquid, which starts off smoky, creamy, and sweet, then finishes on a bitter note. It’s again served with a ponzu sauce, which pairs with fugu like ketchup to fries.

Next up is sashimi, sliced paper-thin and fanned around the plate like petals on a flower. The gelatinous delicacy is thinly sliced like noodles, with seaweed, grated daikon, and a ponzu sauce, and is part of Sushi Taro’s 10-course, $138 fugu tasting menu. My first bite of tora-fugu, the Japanese species of blowfish containing deadly poison in its organs, is the skin.

Blowfish fugu