Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines is the only carrier offering daily direct flights between Georgia and Tokyo, and those incoming flights bring more than just passengers. The belly of each Airbus A350 holds shipments of fresh seafood bound for some of Atlanta’s finest restaurants.
But flights aren’t solely reserved for seafood. Industry insiders told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that many top-quality food items are shipped via air cargo due to the service’s speed and reliable temperature control. Thanks to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, local restaurants and food importers have easy access to fresh ingredients from all over the world.
Andy Kirschner, Delta’s director of cargo sales for the Americas, said that during the summer, nearly every direct flight to Atlanta from Santiago, Chile, and Fairbanks, Alaska, is loaded down with salmon. Lobsters fly in from Boston and Miami, while crawfish arrive from New Orleans. Multiple flights per day from across Southern California bring in fresh fruits and vegetables.
“It can be packaged that morning and it’s in Atlanta in the afternoon,” Kirschner said. “That’s what the end consumer wants — they want that freshness. And we’re able to provide that.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Freshness is key for Atlanta’s young but wildly successful omakase sushi scene. Omakase, which roughly translates to “I leave it up to you,” is a style of service like a tasting menu. Customers pay a fixed price for a multicourse dinner that usually includes a variety of nigiri (usually one piece of sliced fish atop a small quantity of rice) prepared and eaten à la minute.
In the previous decade, the concept of omakase was virtually nonexistent in Atlanta. Sushi Hayakawa on Buford Highway was one of the only restaurants making a serious effort at the dining format. The original restaurant, which has since relocated to West Midtown, received a glowing three-star review from the AJC in 2017 when it transitioned away from an à la carte menu to omakase only. At the time, the move felt bold and fresh.
Today, omakase has become a buzzword used in place of “prix fixe” or “set menu.” Sushi omakase restaurants dominate the Atlanta Michelin Guide, and the style has spread beyond sushi-exclusive restaurants.
The omakase explosion can be traced to a couple of developments, beginning in 2019 when Delta got federal approval to operate a direct flight between Atlanta and Tokyo’s Haneda airport. The new route was a game-changer, giving shipments of fresh Japanese seafood a faster, easier path to Atlanta.
The coronavirus pandemic may have temporarily derailed the restaurant industry, but that time also served as an incubation period for sushi restaurants like Mujo and Omakase Table, which both began as pop-ups serving fish delivered directly from Japan.
Around the same time, the procedure for inspecting fish imported from Japan improved, according to Paul Gutting, executive chef of upscale Japanese restaurant Ryokou. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring the safety of all imported foods. When it comes to seafood, inspectors have to check shipments to make sure products are sanitary, safe to eat and properly labeled.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Inspections performed in the U.S. required officials to open the coolers of seafood once they arrived in Atlanta, destabilizing the storage temperatures near the end of the shipping timeline.
As the pandemic wound down, the USFDA placed inspectors in Japan to check shipments before they were sent to Atlanta, Gutting said. Now, the fresh seafood is inspected first, then sealed in shipping containers in Japan that aren’t unpacked until they’re in the kitchens of the restaurants where it will be served.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Ryokou, the Adair Park restaurant backed by sushi maestro Leonard Yu, is part of the new wave of omakase that’s not exclusively sushi, though there is a spectacular nigiri course. A meal there is an education in Japanese cuisine, with delicious lessons in the different sushi cuts of bluefin tuna, the grades of marbling in Wagyu beef and where the best-tasting firefly squid are caught.
Gutting said he typically receives orders from Japan about four days after he places them. But he doesn’t order from stock already available in Tokyo’s Toyosu Market, the largest fish market in the world. The fish he requests might still be swimming in the Pacific when his order is placed. The same is true for sister restaurants Omakase Table and Neko, all run by Yu.
Gutting usually places his largest weekly order by 11 a.m. Friday — that’s midnight Saturday in Japan, 13 hours ahead. The import company consolidates orders from different restaurants and around 4 a.m. Tokyo time, brokers begin inspecting and buying the fresh catch of the day based on their understanding of the quality required and the prices each restaurant is willing to pay.
The process of buying all the components and assembling the order takes a couple of days, and the brokers typically purchase the most perishable items at the last possible moment. Fish is wrapped in several layers of moisture-wicking paper, parchment paper and plastic. It’s then packed in Styrofoam boxes layered with ice packs, newspaper and green parchment paper.
Gutting’s Friday order typically leaves Tokyo on Monday night and lands in Atlanta about 12 hours later, where it’s still Monday night. His order is stored in Delta’s cargo facility overnight until it’s retrieved by the importer who delivers it Tuesday morning.
Credit: Omakase Table/Brandon Amato
Credit: Omakase Table/Brandon Amato
Delta’s cargo facility is crucial for shipments of perishable items destined for Atlanta’s restaurants, and not every airport has the same capabilities.
About 2,700 commercial flights land and depart at Hartsfield-Jackson every day and many of those passenger planes double as cargo flights. Delta alone operates nearly 970 daily flights at the Atlanta airport, and the airline’s huge cargo handling facility includes a four-chamber, 12,000-square-foot cooler system and more than 30,000 square feet of temperature-controlled area. Delta Cargo itself is a billion-dollar business, Kirschner said.
Hartsfield-Jackson’s cargo capabilities directly influenced Andre Melchionda to move to Atlanta in 2021 and start Arrivato Imports, which imports fine foods like caviar, Wagyu beef and truffles. He said security protocols around shipping goods on commercial flights ensure that the chain of custody of each package is closely monitored. The tight security keeps travelers safe, but it also helps with shipping reliability.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
“I think if I were to look at the dining scene of each city with a major airport, I can almost guarantee [it’s] going to be better there than anywhere else,” Melchionda said.
Other cities, especially around the Southeast, might have bustling, smaller airports, but that doesn’t mean they have the same cargo capabilities, equivalent facilities or diversity of direct flights. Every stop, transfer, connection and new vehicle in the journey of a food product to its final destination adds risk to a highly perishable delivery, Melchionda said. Few airports have as many direct flight destinations as Atlanta.
With such a long, complex and fast-moving supply chain, mistakes and unforeseen issues are inevitable. Spoiled fish can’t be returned, Gutting said, but typically suppliers will give restaurants credit if they can provide evidence that they received bad product. Gutting said an order for Omakase Table was once left on the tarmac by mistake, ruining most of a week’s worth of fish. Delta paid for that order, Gutting said, but such instances are rare.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
According to Kirschner, Atlanta’s airport brings local restaurants to the doorstep of fish markets and farm stands all over the world. “Basically, the fish can be swimming the night before and it’s on the tables the next night for dinner,” he said.
“If they’re putting it on a morning flight to us [from South Florida], it’s about a two-hour process to tender [the package] to us ... and it’s about a two-hour recovery process when it gets here,” Kirschner said. “From a competitive standpoint, it’s really the same timeframe. Someone eating fish in the Bahamas, or South Florida, or in Atlanta can really have the same quality and freshness.”
Gutting said he’s seen Atlanta’s fine dining scene change as the airport has grown.
“It is really interesting to see the food scene blow up like it has,” Gutting said. “[The airport is] always doing construction and expanding. But also, with Delta headquarters here, it creates this environment for the fish to come [directly to] Atlanta, instead of stopping first in New York or Los Angeles.”
It’s no secret that Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport for more than 25 years, is a major economic engine for Atlanta, the state and the region. But it’s also the reason local diners can enjoy the rare opportunity to taste uni from three different locations in one course at Omakase Table, or experience a bluefin tuna cutting and tasting dinner at Brush Sushi featuring a fresh, 200-pound fish caught in Japanese waters.
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