Even the most casual, airport sushi-eating consumer will tell you that raw tuna is one of the best fish you'll ever eat. (Step aside, salmon-lovers).
So you can almost understand why Kiyoshi Kimura, owner of the Japanese restaurant chain Sushizanmai, recently decided to purchase a 613-pound, $3.1 million bluefin tuna for his restaurant.
Almost.
Kimura purchased the fish at an auction at Tokyo's newest fish market. In 2015, Kimura purchased a fish approximately half its weight and at half the price.
Still, Kimura seemed to experience some mild regret.
"The tuna looks so tasty and very fresh, but I think I did too much,” Kimura later told reporters. “I expected it would be between 30 million and 50 million yen, or 60 million yen at the highest, but it ended up five times more."
The decrease in supply of the fish appears to have caused the spike in price. Bluefin tuna is severely overfished and is listed as a vulnerable fish by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
That sounds terrible. Now please ... someone get me a cut of that fish.
