The Overlooked Appeal of Eel

Rob Klink at Oceanaire coats conger eel in sesame seeds and serves it with Thai chili sauce and Asian salad. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

With flaky, moist and snowy-white flesh, this pleasant-tasting fish can be prepared in dozens of ways. In flavor and texture, think grouper or sea bass or cod. Still, for a restaurant, it's tough to promote "conger" when its last name is "eel."

"I wish it wasn't called conger eel," says Rob Klink, executive chef of Oceanaire Seafood Room in downtown Washington. "It's hard enough to sell something new when people aren't used to it."

The appearance of the live conger doesn't help. Wriggling in at seven to eight feet in length and 10 inches in diameter, this nocturnal bottom feeder, which inhabits deep-water shipwrecks and coral reefs, has a cylindrical, scale-free, mottled pink-and-gray-skinned body that is covered in a thick insulating slime. At one end is a bulbous head that looks something like a sock puppet with a pronounced overbite (anyone remember Ollie from early television's "Kukla, Fran and Ollie"?).

But while some may envision a scary sea beast with a name to match, Klink sees a fish with a future. For an Italian presentation, he lightly bakes conger fillets in olive oil and tops them with roasted plum tomatoes. Crusted in sesame seeds, a Japanese-style grilled conger is served with a wasabi beurre blanc. But the biggest sellers at Oceanaire are a spicy/sweet conger pad Thai and all-American conger chowder.

Aside from versatility, Klink appreciates that conger eel, which is also called kingclip by wholesalers, costs, on average, 50 percent less than the popular Chilean sea bass, American red snapper or halibut.

Rich Regan, chef and co-owner of Monocacy Crossing near Frederick, is the only other area chef using conger eel imported from Chile.

"When I first tried it, I poached it, I grilled it, I sautéed it and braised it, and it stays together and can stand up to a spicy, aggressive sauce," says Regan, who calls conger "a strong seller and image builder for the restaurant." Tomorrow night, for a Flying Dog beer dinner at the Crossing, Regan is serving blackened conger eel fingers as appetizers.

Wholesalers are also trying to attract chefs by stressing the environmental advantages of using of the abundant conger eel. "It's the underutilized species that a lot of chefs are looking for," says Kurt Friesland, who works for Jessup-based seafood wholesaler J.J. McDonnell. "The conger can take some of the pressure off of species that are being overused."

In the past, he says, conger eel has been "misrepresented by some wholesalers as grouper and snapper. The texture and taste are nearly the same. But now we're all recognizing the integrity of the product and selling it for what it is, a good value."

Friesland has been working with the Embassy of Chile to promote eel in the United States, although, thus far, it's been a tough sell.

"It's always been one of the most popular fish in Chile. It's in every supermarket and every restaurant on the coast," says Ricardo Bosnic, economic officer for the embassy. "But promoting it here is difficult because it doesn't look like a normal fish."

At the retail level, Friesland has not been able to interest any Washington area supermarket or fish market in carrying conger. Though the words of a world-famous Chilean poet might be helpful.