Long before the caviar crisis became official with a United Nations ban on beluga sturgeon eggs in 2006, the billionaire knew something was up.
Cable mogul Ralph Roberts noticed a problem four years ago with his regular order of scrambled eggs and caviar at the Happy Rooster in Center City, and registered a gripe with owner Rose Parrotta.
"It looks like you're giving me less caviar!" Roberts complained.
"Well, it looks like my Comcast bill is going up, too!" shot back the ever-sassy Parrotta.
At least they were haggling over genuine Russian sevruga, though its cost had already begun a perilous climb. Prices have since shot so high on any remaining wild Caspian caviar - increasingly rare sevruga and osetra are now fetching from $120 to $195 an ounce, and most of it is either Iranian or smuggled - that Parrotta took it off her menu three months ago.
It was a blow to the legacy of the Happy Rooster, which under previous owner "Doc" Ulitsky was known as one of Center City's go-to haunts for Petrossian luxury. So like the rest of the caviar-loving world, Parrotta is investigating the alternatives. That includes domestic roe from other species of fish (Roberts' scrambled eggs, she said, now get heaping portions of that), synthetic caviars made from soy, and the increasingly impressive caviar from farm-raised sturgeon.
Aquacultured sturgeon caviar is gaining international acceptance due to its sustainability, and is being raised from Uruguay to Israel, with varying degrees of success. American innovator Sterling, one of the two major sturgeon farms in California, has seen its sales increase from half a ton in 2000 to an expected eight to 10 tons this year, according to general manager Peter Struffenegger.
But can these new-age caviars deliver the delicately salty pop and complex flavors of the wild roes of yore?
An Inquirer tasting panel of myself, food writer Rick Nichols, and former Inquirer Moscow correspondent Inga Saffron, whose book Caviar (Broadway Books, 2002) detailed the history and modern dilemma of the regal fish, set out to determine just that. We tasted four farm-raised sturgeon caviars, as well as two non-sturgeon alternatives, and the results were decidedly mixed.
The focus was on the caviars from white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), a Pacific species native to America's northwest coast that has been successfully raised in freshwater farms near Sacramento, Calif., as well as in other parts of the world.
