The origin of an appetizer: A look at the creation of calamari

Tracking the fascinating story behind calamari's journey from the sea to every restaurant's appetizer menu

Calamari, the Italian word for squids, has long been a staple food source in the Mediterranean but took a bit longer to catch on in North America, it dominates the appetizer sections of menus at establishments both gourmet and pedestrian, served alongside dipping sauces that range from lavender aioli to balsamic vinaigrette to tartar or marinara sauce.

Until somewhat recently, fishermen along North America’s eastern seaboard used the calamari they caught as bait. If they had enough bait, they would discard the squids back into the sea. According to the New York Times, “Even up to [1981], squid fetched fishermen barely 10 cents a pound. Today the price is more than [$2] a pound and squid, or calamari, as it is increasingly being called, has become fancy fare...”

The popularity of squid on North American menus is said to have begun as a trial-and-error experiment by the Cornell Cooperative Extension Division whose mission is, among other things, “to improve New York State communities through partnerships...in the areas of agriculture and food systems...” As Long Island fishermen in the 1970s and '80s had “taken a hard hit...as the marine stocks traditionally depended on flounder and cod...but these are greatly reduced in numbers. So there has been much legislation to prohibit their over-harvesting,” the CCED encouraged “fishermen to remain in business by going after underexploited and underfished species...to literally stay afloat.”

The Long Island Fisheries Assistance Program got on board with the CCED, and soon afterward, so did the Empire State Development Program, and soon after that, so did the Economic Development Administration of the Federal Commerce Department. And since the movement went federal, the movement went national. Restaurants that couldn’t buy as much haddock and cod and flounder and other overfished species as they were used to were encouraged by local distributors and the feds alike to replace such items with squid. Chefs were encouraged, via federally issued memos, to treat the squid as they would any other fish in order to foster any kind of familiarity with the customers, who, widely in North America, at least, prefer to take their fish encased in breading and deep-fried with a dipping sauce.

Squeamish and skeptical restaurant owners believed such a large meal-sized portion of a heretofore uncommon and forbidding ingredient might scare away customers, so they began, as a trial run, offering it in smaller portions as an appetizer. The CCED, along with the other state and federal programs involved, encouraged both fishermen and restaurants to call the ingredient (for human consumption) by its Italian name, as it’s known along large sections of the Mediterranean, correctly believing that the word evokes a sense of European exoticism that the word squid decidedly does not. The CCED knew that what we name something determines whether or not we will eat it. They set out to actively “tap into” and change “consumers’ tastes,” and they pulled it off.

reposted from: https://www.salon.com/2014/08/31/from_chicken_tenders_to_calamari_the_strange_story_behind_the_creation_of_appetizers/

 MATTHEW GAVIN FRANK AUGUST 31, 2014