Geiger counters become ‘plat du jour’

At the luxurious Peony restaurant in Taipei, fine Japanese dining comes with a Geiger counter.

The Peony, at the heart of Taipei’s commercial district, is probably the first restaurant in the world after the Japan earthquake to offer customers – typically investment bankers from the Taipei 101 tower next door, or Japanese executives from nearby Sumitomo Mitsui – the option of checking their sashimi for radiation contamination.

“We didn’t want to put the Geiger counter out originally because we were afraid of losing it, but customers just kept asking us to scan their food for them and compare the reading with their friends’ dishes,” Erica Wang, restaurant manager, said.

The move may be more gimmick than substance. Fresh fish, and indeed any Japanese food imported into Taiwan, is rigorously checked for radiation, both by customs officials at the ports and by the restaurant’s staff, long before they appear on Peony’s pristine tablecloths.

But as global concerns mount about a food safety crisis in Japan, Peony’s example highlights the practical difficulties that restaurants and companies face, from reassuring their customers to securing adequate supplies.

Ms Wang says the biggest impact from the earthquake is in securing adequate supplies of fresh fish. “Normally the wholesaler gets the fish at about 6am-7am and we receive them at 10am at the latest,” she says. Because there is now an extra level of checks for Japanese food imports at Taiwanese customs, the fish are at least a day late.

This has left the Peony scrambling to look for alternative supplies. “During the day, when they’re not busy preparing food, our chefs are all on the phone frantically calling fishermen to try to get supplies, but it’s very difficult because other restaurants are all doing the same,” she says.

Even if they could find alternative sources for Tuesday’s menu, Ms Wang said: “The texture and the feel of it is just not as good. There is also the matter of finding the right kind of fish – cherry salmon are in season now and you can only get them from Japan.”

Fortunately in Taiwan, the appetite for Japanese food appears undiminished by last week’s nuclear crisis and the uncertainty about the safety of Japanese food.

But, Ms Wang said: “There hasn’t been too much of an impact in terms of bookings and demand in the past week.”

In fact, there were about 10 to 15 more people there on Monday than typically, with many drawn to eat at the restaurant because Peony and its Geiger counter were featured on Taiwanese television news shows at the weekend.