![]() By the late 1990s, more and more of the world’s squid was being processed in China, which was also catching more and more of the creature. Then China stepped in, providing cheap labor as a solution to the problem. That initially made many restaurants reluctant to embrace it as an offering. “Squid is truly the food of the future,” says Paul Greenberg, the best-selling author of “Four Fish and American Catch.”īut squid is time-consuming to prepare, particularly on a large scale. Squid are also surprisingly equipped to handle climate change: Ocean acidification doesn’t seem to bother the animal, and rising ocean temperatures can cause it to reproduce more quickly. Environmentally minded chefs like it because it is one of the lowest carbon-emitting sources of animal protein on the planet. Americans imported or caught at least 85,000 metric tons of squid in 2022. The appetizer’s meteoric rise in popularity eventually led The New York Times to create the Fried Calamari Index in 2014, a tool for tracking the historical emergence of trendy foods. Thespians staged a squid-themed play about morality. A 30-foot model squid was constructed for the event. The festival grew more extravagant in the years that followed, with attendance ballooning to thousands of people. Restaurants tried it, and it worked: Americans started to order calamari.Īround 1980, the dish had become so popular that a restaurant in Santa Cruz, Calif., started the annual International Calamari Festival, drawing some 600 attendees. ![]() Other experts also argued that restaurateurs should start referring to squid as calamari, from words for the animal in several Romance languages, which sounded more exotic. American consumers would probably get over squid’s texture if, as with onion rings, chefs breaded and fried it. That all changed in1974, when a business school student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Paul Kalikstein came up with an idea. Collectively, they began a rebranding campaign designed to persuade Americans to eat more of the ubiquitous, eight-armed mollusk - no small task, given that most people considered the creature to be slimy and generally off-putting. Alarmed by the looming crisis, politicians, universities and conservationists decided that one way to address the problem would be to encourage Americans to eat more squid, of which there was plenty. In the early 1970s, American stocks of traditionally targeted fish like cod and menhaden were plummeting. This sea change in the appetizer universe can be traced back to a few key catalysts: the magic of marketing, the unintended consequences of a federal conservation campaign and the rise of China as the world’s unrivaled seafood superpower. By 1990, however, the invertebrate - now masquerading as calamari - had become a restaurant staple, appearing in the appetizer lane of menus across America alongside Buffalo wings and loaded potato skins. fishermen caught squid mostly by mistake, and when they did, they either tossed it back or used it as bait. Americans didn’t always have an appetite for squid.Īs recently as 1970, U.S.
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