A friend recently opined - in relation to a restaurant visit - that the seafood dish was probably bad because of the distance from the coast, and that said establishment (like most inland ones) would have been better off avoiding sea creatures altogether. SEAFOOD MYTHSOddly, this is an opinion still shared by many. I say "oddly" because the reality of the modern fishing industry means that all but the smallest mom and pop joint in Paternoster has anything but a symbolic and emotional relationship to the seas around them (gastronomically speaking).Most of the fish we eat in restaurants and buy at our fishmongers comes from very far offshore. So far in fact that whether you're buying it in Bloem or Cape Town should make little difference to its freshness. And should fresh mean never-frozen or should it mean in-the-best-possible-condition? It's not uncommon for much of the fish on a sashimi board to have been frozen before it even hits the shore. Having twice bitten into a still-half-icy piece of tuna sashimi at coastal restaurants, I don't doubt this.Fishing trawlers are massive, they go out on long journeys, and they don't nip back to deliver 5kg of fish to your favourite sushi haunt by supper-time. Yes, a few coastal spots have that sort of arrangement with small fishing boats, but we're talking a drop in the you-know-where. Don't be put off though: the best industrial freezing is on another level: super-freezing at around 76°C below zero gives an amazing result, and many top sushi chefs in America and Japan even opt for this.In the case of salmon, some authorities reckon you should never approach it raw if it hasn't been frozen, to make sure any lurking parasites are killed. In the US, it's not even legal to sell never-been-frozen raw salmon. But industry experts I asked reckon there's only a danger with wild salmon, and that farmed stock is highly regulated and rigorously tested.Whether pre-frozen or not, quality in a restaurant situation will often have more to do with the organisation and ethos of the particular place than with the source of the fish. Many restaurants receive perfect sashimi-grade fish from suppliers. Very few respect it. Most of the stuff I see on sushi counters is barely fit for consumption.There are very few places in my city where I can put raw fish in my mouth and expect pleasure. The best of these is Japa. It has the best sushi, sashimi and suno-mono (vinegared raw seafood salad) offering in our city, by a country mile. Little wonder that almost all its customers are Japanese. Japa Express, Rivonia Village, 322 Rivonia Boulevard, 011-807-3999..