- This is a scorpion fish.
It's one of the most venomous fish in the world,
and today, we'll be eating the scorpion fish.
There's the heat.
So today, guys, we are at Fine and Rare,
and this restaurant we've been at previously before.
We did the giant ostrich egg.
Hoo boy, OK.
Fine and Rare specializes and kinda focuses
on these rare foods or ingredients
that they showcase to its customers.
And this time around, they managed to find scorpion fish.
If the name doesn't sound daunting enough,
obviously I've never had scorpion fish before,
and the only existing knowledge I have
is that it sounds dangerous.
So if I were to just kinda like...
touch that, I could get hurt?
So we are going to pull out my phone
and do some research on what a scorpion fish is
because I will be eating one
in a few minutes.
According to Britannica, a scorpion fish,
first impression is it's not a cute fish.
And related topics, the first word
that comes up is "venom," so that's nice.
Scorpion fish are perchlike fish
with large spiny heads and strong,
sometimes venomous, fin spines.
If you do get pricked by one of these things
in the ocean, do you need to go to the emergency room?
- Yeah, if you should step on one
or have an unpleasant encounter
with a scorpion fish and get pricked
by one of these, you do need to seek medical help.
- Am I excited?
Yes.
Am I nervous?
Probably more than I am excited.
Mom, if you're watching this and I don't make
it alive today, I love you.
- So I first came across scorpion fish,
I had a restaurant on the cape, Provincetown.
It's line-caught, short-line caught,
so it's generally one person going out
fishing for generally not the scorpion fish
because they couldn't really sell this at market.
A lot of the people who would buy
the fish generally in market after
the fisherman caught them, they didn't
wanna deal with it for two reasons.
They thought it was too spiny and that it was venomous.
But it's not poisonous. There's a difference
between poisonous and venomous.
Poisonous is if you eat it you can get sick.
Venomous, you actually have to be injected.
- Finally, it was my turn to meet the fish.
That is a gnarly looking fi...I didn't know
it was like gonna be that bright.
So if I were to just kinda like...
touch that, I could get hurt?
- No, you're pretty safe. Once they're dead,
the venom can't be injected into you,
but you're safe.
The thing about it, it's very hard to source,
hard to find.
So a scorpion fish if you're lucky enough
to find it in your market, is probably gonna go
for about $16 or $17 a pound,
and the fish generally weigh about 3 to 4 pounds.
Herrine: OK, is that on the more expensive scale
or cheaper scale?
- It's probably on the more expensive scale.
You wanna hold it?
- OK, so were just gonna, OK, oh.
I mean, it is a pretty fish. I take it back.
It's not an ugly fish. It's just very spiny.
- So here at Fine and Rare, our take on scorpion fish
is we do it for lunch exclusively right now,
and we thought it'd be fun to do a take on fish and chips.
And only for me when I butcher it,
you just gotta be careful not to prick yourself
with some of the porcupines on the fish.
So just last week when I was preparing
the fish, they have little porcupines on their face,
which are hard to see. I kinda brushed my hand on it,
and it was kind of irritating and painful
for a couple of hours, so you really need to be careful.
Kinda bit me.
Herrine: Did it really? Chef: Yeah.
So for the diner, scorpion fish is a 100% safe to eat.
So fish and chips is generally made from cod or haddock,
and the thing about the scorpion fish,
it's kind of a mix between a monkfish
and a sea bass, so it's not as meaty
and tough as a monkfish, and it's not
as flaky as a sea bass would be.
One of the reason I think they do taste so well
is what they eat.
They stay in the reefs, and they eat
a lot of shrimp and lobsters.
So some people say they actually taste sweet like
a lobster because of that.
The fish and chips, the way we prepare it here,
not only do we do the scorpion fish,
but we also have a scorpion dusting spice,
which we use a scorpion chili pepper,
which is the second-hottest chili out there.
- Ooh, that's gonna hurt.
All righty, here goes nothing.
That was a mistake.
- Our customers first are intrigued
by the whole scorpion fish theme,
but once they taste it,
I think everybody's kind of amazed how delicious
and sweet the fish actually is.
It's probably the best fish and chips you'll ever eat.
- My first bite into scorpion fish.
It really just does look like
a flaky, like, fish, so.
There's the heat.
If I was a first-timer and I saw scorpion fish
on the menu, I probably wouldn't order it,
but having this fish and chips,
I honestly wanna say that
this fish is better than a lot
of the fish and chips that I've had in London
or anywhere else really.
The fish itself has, like, a lot more meatiness
and flakiness to it, and it's, like,
nice and bouncy like monkfish,
and I love monkfish.
Now that I know that it's perfectly safe to eat
and it's delicious, I would probably order
the scorpion fish again.
The most dangerous thing by far is not the fish,
it is the chili that goes into the seasoning here.