Two fish deeply rooted in Japanese culinary culture are making a push into Canadian kitchens, but the goal is not simply to put more sushi on Toronto menus.

At a recent industry tasting at the Shangri-La Toronto, the Japan Farmed Fish Association brought together chefs and culinary professionals to introduce them to Buri and Madai, two prized Japanese farmed fish that offer distinctly different flavours and textures, along with a surprising amount of versatility.

The September 28 event was part education, part tasting and part culinary experiment. Shangri-La Toronto Executive Chef JohnRoss Woodland and his team approached the fish through a range of preparations and flavour profiles, while visiting representatives from Japan explained the aquaculture traditions behind them.

For Woodland, who had only worked with Madai once previously in his career, the starting point was simply the quality of what arrived in his kitchen.

“The quality, the story, you know, obviously, we’re always after the highest quality of anything we can get,” he said. “So when we heard about the Buri and the Madai, we were super excited.”

So, What Are Buri and Madai?

Madai is Japanese red sea bream, or Pagrus major. Recognizable by its red colour and translucent white flesh, it has a mild flavour, subtle sweetness and firm texture.

In Japan, Madai is sometimes described as the “King of Fish” and has cultural significance extending well beyond the dinner table. The Japanese word medetai, meaning auspicious or celebratory, contains tai, and the fish has long been associated with good fortune.

Whole grilled Madai is traditionally served at weddings, New Year’s celebrations and okuizome, a ceremony marking approximately 100 days after a baby’s birth.

Buri, meanwhile, is Japanese yellowtail, Seriola quinqueradiata. One of the unusual aspects of the fish is that its Japanese name changes as it grows, with terminology also varying by region. The mature fish, generally around 80 centimetres or larger, is commonly called Buri.

That distinction matters.

International diners are likely more familiar with Hamachi, the younger form of yellowtail frequently encountered at sushi restaurants. Mature Buri is larger and fattier, with powerful swimming muscles, rich flavour and pronounced umami.

Woodland immediately noticed the difference when his team began breaking down the fish.

“For me, for sure, the texture is a huge difference,” he said. “Especially the Buri had such a nice texture.”

The fat was equally impressive.

“When we took the dry-aged Buri and we filleted it out, you could see the fat on the board. You could see the fat in the stomach area,” he said. “That’s flavour, that’s mouthfeel. That’s everything a chef is looking for.”

Getting Buri and Madai Out of the Sushi Box

One of the most interesting messages at the Toronto event was that neither fish needs to remain confined to Japanese cuisine.

Representatives from JFFEA said that while some Canadian chefs are already familiar with Hamachi and sea bream, they want Buri and Madai to reach chefs working across Toronto’s restaurant industry, including Italian, Spanish and other non-Japanese kitchens.

Woodland’s menu put that proposition to the test.

One preparation combined rice, basil and daikon into something that referenced sushi without actually being sushi.

“We wanted to do something that was sushi-ish without being sushi,” Woodland explained. “It’s kind of Italian flavours of basil running through it.”

Another experiment moved toward Mexico. The kitchen reduced corn to create something resembling a natural polenta, then transformed the salsa component of a taco into a clear, gelled preparation that retained the flavour of salsa. It was served on a tortilla chip, effectively reimagining a tostada.

Other preparations explored smoking, curing, raw preparations and fully cooking the fish. Madai with spaghetti squash was designed specifically to demonstrate that the fish could anchor an entrée rather than being relegated to sashimi, a canapé or an appetizer.

“You can smoke them, you can cure them. You can just slice them raw. You can cook them fully,” Woodland said.

That adaptability ultimately became one of his biggest takeaways from working with the two species.

“With Buri and Madai, you don’t necessarily need to go a specific direction,” he said. “You could go earthiness, you could go sweetness, you could go sour, you could go any kind of direction and it really is just a blank canvas for whatever your cuisine is.”

What Happens When a Thai Chef Tries Them?

That argument became more convincing when chefs attending the event began imagining what they could do with the fish themselves.

Chef Nuit Regular and restaurateur Jeff Regular, known for Toronto restaurants including PAI and Sukhothai, approached Buri and Madai from an entirely different culinary tradition.

Thai cuisine regularly makes use of fish such as sea bass, sea bream and tilapia, but after tasting the Japanese fish, Regular was particularly interested in their potential for raw preparations.

“I always like the sashimi part of it because that way you get the real raw,” she said, pointing to the clean flavour of the fish and the contrast between the richer, fattier characteristics of Buri and the qualities of Madai.

Her mind quickly went to Thai seafood sauce.

Rather than pairing raw fish with the expected soy sauce, she imagined using the bright, assertive green seafood sauces found in Thai cooking. She also began considering how the fish might work with curry and other cooked preparations.

For Regular, however, adopting a new ingredient is about more than whether it tastes good.

“First of all, it’s great to know how the product comes from and how it is treated,” she explained. “For me, cooking is all about love and caring.”

Knowing how an ingredient was raised, cared for and transported helps determine whether it belongs in her kitchen.

“The dish doesn’t start” in the restaurant, Jeff Regular added. “It starts at the very beginning.”

That connection between producer and chef was precisely what the Japanese delegation hoped to communicate in Toronto.

The Craft Behind the Fish

Japan’s approach to farming Buri and Madai combines aquaculture technology with practices developed in coastal communities over generations.

JFFEA representatives described the association as the Japanese government’s authorized organization promoting the country’s farmed fish internationally. They said careful farm selection, husbandry and specialized feed are used to develop flavour, quality and umami.

Japanese sea-farming pens known as ikesu allow fish to grow in seawater, while farmers monitor variables including feeding, fish density and growth.

Feed is particularly important. Compound feeds are designed to remain stable in water, helping reduce waste entering the surrounding marine environment. Some farms have also introduced automated feeding technology.

Madai has another advantage from an aquaculture perspective: JFFEA representatives said its production can operate through a completely farmed life cycle, allowing producers to manage fish from hatchery through growth and harvest. They said increasing the proportion of Buri produced through a complete farmed cycle is also a long-term objective.

Stocking density is managed as well. Allowing sufficient room for the fish to swim is important both for welfare and for preventing physical damage.

Once harvested, handling becomes crucial.

Traditional techniques including ikejime and shinkeinuki are intended to quickly stop neurological activity, followed by bleeding of the fish. The objective is to minimize stress and protect texture, freshness and flavour.

For chefs, the results become apparent on the cutting board.

A Fish That Can Be Dry-Aged

Perhaps Woodland’s most striking experiment was dry-aging the fish.

Fresh fish is commonly associated with immediacy: catch it, process it and serve it as quickly as possible. Dry-aging turns that assumption on its head by carefully controlling the fish as it ages.

Woodland pushed Buri to approximately 10 days.

“To push the fish to 10 days and it still smell like it just came out of the ocean is phenomenal,” he said.

The quality of the flesh also allowed the kitchen to experiment in ways that can be difficult with fish that has previously been frozen and thawed.

“The fact that it’s coming in like that, and you can dry age it, is unheard of in something that’s not a sushi restaurant,” he said.

Smoking produced another revelation. Woodland compared Buri’s suitability for smoking to salmon, where natural fat helps carry and absorb smoke.

“Even a 10-minute smoke just sunk in so well,” he said.

The kitchen also barbecued collars, smoked bones, torched skin and dry-aged fish on the bone, treating Buri and Madai less as delicate specialty seafood and more as raw materials chefs could manipulate in much the same way they might approach meat.

“These fish have held up well in all preparations,” Woodland said.

Why Toronto?

The Toronto event followed an earlier Canadian showcase in Vancouver in March 2025.

JFFEA representatives said the country’s two largest economic centres were natural places to introduce the products, but Canada’s growing familiarity with Japanese food is equally important. The prevalence of sushi counters, including those now found in supermarkets, was cited as evidence of how firmly Japanese cuisine has entered the Canadian mainstream.

Toronto offers another advantage: diners here are accustomed to moving between cuisines.

Chef Nuit Regular sees that openness firsthand.

“The fish itself, it speaks for itself,” she said.

Once chefs know they have a quality product, she argued, there is no reason a single cuisine should be responsible for showcasing it. She could imagine the fish with Thai curry or dipping sauces just as easily as with soy sauce and sashimi preparations.

For Jeff Regular, that experimentation fits Toronto particularly well.

“The beauty of Toronto is that we’re kind of spoiled with food,” he said, pointing to the extraordinary range of cuisines available across the city and diners’ willingness to explore unfamiliar ingredients.

Two Everyday Fish With Centuries of History

Despite the care and cultural significance surrounding Buri and Madai, JFFEA representatives stressed that these aren’t obscure luxury ingredients in Japan.

They described them as two essential fish within Japanese food culture, available widely rather than reserved exclusively for high-end dining.

“It’s not for high end. It is for every people,” one representative explained, noting that Buri and Madai can be found across Japanese restaurants and homes.

That may ultimately be the most interesting possibility for Canada.

Buri and Madai arrive with a distinctly Japanese story: ocean currents, coastal farms, specialized husbandry, careful harvesting techniques and centuries of culinary tradition. But the Toronto tasting wasn’t really asking Canadian chefs to reproduce Japanese cooking.

It was asking what happens when they don’t.

Woodland’s Italian-influenced rice preparation, Mexican-inspired tostada, smoked Buri and dry-aged fish offered one set of answers. Chef Nuit Regular was already thinking about Thai seafood sauce and curry.

The next answers may come from Toronto’s Italian, French, Chinese, Spanish, Caribbean or other kitchens.

As Yoshihiro Kobayashi, director and secretary general of the Japan Farmed Fish Association, put it, the goal is for Canadians to understand what distinguishes the products.

“From the waters in which they are raised to the way they are harvested, processed and prepared, every stage contributes to the quality, texture, and flavour of the fish.”

For Woodland, the proposition is even simpler. Give a chef an ingredient capable of standing on its own while also accepting almost any flavour thrown at it, and possibilities tend to follow.

“As a chef, I can do a lot with this, or I can do nothing with this, and still it would be amazing.”