The origin of our raw produce
Hola Ricardo. Hei Erling! Our producers.
We like to know where our raw produce comes from. And if they have the same high quality standards in production as us. Which is why we know as many of our producers personally as possible. We have worked with some of our suppliers for more than seven (itchy) years. It is important to us to pull together and to try and develop flexible solutions together. Even though we don’t always make it easy for them, given Tom’s stubborness and Tim’s temper, we still managed to forge some friendships. For example, with Ricardo, our rice supplier from Spain, who has supplied us with our sushi-rice for years. (Hola Ricardo? Que tal?) Ricardo grew up growing rice. He knows instinctively what to look out for and how to produce high quality rice. Erling is from Norway and we have bought our salmon almost exclusively from him for six years now. We have visited him in Norway several times and have an excellent, trusting relationship with him. We don’t only know his production facilities but also some of his suppliers and salmon farms which farm our salmon in the fjords of Norway.
Who invented it? The Norwegians.
For our Natsu sushi we exclusively use aquaculture salmon from Norway. Norway has the reputation as the best and highest quality salmon supplier world wide. Chile is number two on the market. But we don’t buy salmon from Chile because there are some dodgy practices used out there, even though it would be cheaper. The salmon from Norway is delivered frozen to Germany and processed by us over here. But frozen is not fresh? That’s what you think. Since we are talking about sushi, the salmon is consumed raw. But if fish is consumed raw, it needs to be frozen at least for a day, as it implied by the German food law. This prevents potential health hazards caused by parasites. This means: Our salmon is freshly slaughtered in Norway and freshly frozen delivered to Germany.
From South East Asia to Neuss: The long journey of the Ebi-shrimp.
We would supply all our raw produce from Europe if we could. But there is raw produce which simply isn’t available in Europe. That is the case with the Ebi shrimp as well. The shrimps we use come from SE Asia, Vietnam to be precise. We know that there are many black sheep among the shrimp farmers in Vietnam. They just don’t want to comply to rules which require dealing responsibly with animals and food. We are aware of this problem. Therefore, we cooperate with a German importer who has good and personal contacts to his suppliers. Since it is not possible to know every shrimp farmer personally, we request in-depth analysis of the produce at various levels of the delivery chain, e.g. in order to investigate levels of antibiotics, among other important criteria.
The farming and production of our shrimps is also certified by the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA).