May 12, 2009
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A NBC Action News investigation indicates the vast majority of Kansas City restaurants sampled in a 20 restaurant test were serving diners something other than what was promised on the menu.
The undercover video obtained during the NBC Action News investigation shows restaurant workers repeatedly identifying the fish served as what was labeled on the menu.
“Excellent,” is how the waiter at Bice on the Power & Light District described the grouper on the menu. “Very light, white flakey fish.”
“It's pretty good,” is what the clerk at KCK’s City Fish & More said about the red snapper special.
The investigation went undercover inside
20 metro restaurants.
We took samples from each restaurant and sent them to the
Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.
“She's actually going to extract the DNA from the sample,” said Professor Mahmood Shivji as a technician extracted a thin slice of frozen fish retrieved from one of the tested Kansas City restaurants.
The Guy Harvey Research Institute’s DNA tests would reveal so much mislabeled fish.
Out of 20 Kansas City restaurants sampled, the tests indicate 17 restaurants – or 85 percent - substituted fish, most of them with cheaper counterfeits.
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Test Results Not Good
Only three restaurants passed our test.
See Complete Results
The Savoy in Kansas City, Bonefish Grill in Leawood, and Islamorada in the Independence Bass Pro Shop served the fish promised on the menu.
The 17 other restaurants substituted or mislabeled their menu items according to the Guy Harvey Research Institute’s tests.
“Those are completely different fishes,” Shivji said. “That is the highest frequency of substitution and fraud that we've seen.”
“Yeah, red snapper” said the server at the upscale sushi restaurant Nara in the Crossroads District describing what we’d ordered off the menu there.
Nara’s snapper tested out to be much cheaper tilapia.
“You are on private property, I'm going to ask you to leave,” Nara Manager Marco Diaz said when we stopped at the restaurant asking why our DNA test showed we didn’t get what we ordered.
“Ok, let me call 911,” Diaz said, refusing to answer our question. “This is a restaurant.”
Sushi or Something Else?
Nara wasn't alone. Every sushi restaurant we sampled failed the DNA test.
“I was told not to speak on camera by the boss lady,” said the manager of Sushi Gin in Overland Park.
Several sushi restaurants claimed serving cheaper fish as red snapper is an accepted industry standard.
“Everybody uses the same, the whole area,” said a man who identified himself as the manager of Mr. Sushi in Lee’s Summit. “When we open the restaurant, the customer wanted the same thing as (the other restauarants).”
The Guy Harvey Research Institute said even some of the samples from Kansas City’s high priced restaurants failed to meet FDA labeling standards.
“It's a blue nose grouper,” the waiter at the Leawood Bristol is heard on undercover video when asked to describe the grouper there. “Very good.”
