What Does Eel Taste Like? Unagi, Anago & Smoked Eel Explained

What does eel taste like? Rich, mildly sweet and not at all fishy: the cooked flesh is soft, fatty and fine-flaked, closer to sablefish or salmon belly than to any lean white fish, and in Japanese unagi the first thing you taste is the sweet soy glaze. Oil level is high, fishiness is low, and the texture is tender meat under a thin skin that turns soft on the grill.

If you like salmon belly, sablefish or smoked trout, you will like eel. If you want something lighter, order anago (sea eel) instead of unagi, or pick from our mild fish guide.

Eel taste and texture at a glance

	Grilled eel (unagi kabayaki)
Flavor	Rich, mildly sweet, savory; the tare glaze adds caramelized soy and sugar
Texture	Soft, fatty, fine layers; thin skin turns tender, edges crisp
Oil / fat	High: 15 g fat per 100 g cooked, most of it monounsaturated (USDA)
Fishiness	Low
Closest comparison	Sablefish or salmon belly; smoked eel sits next to smoked mackerel
Best cooking methods	Kabayaki (grilled with sweet soy), shirayaki (grilled plain), smoked, simmered (anago)
Nutrition per 100 g, cooked (USDA)	236 kcal, 23.6 g protein, 15 g fat, 1,140 µg vitamin A, 65 mg sodium, 161 mg cholesterol
Mercury / advisory	Not listed in any category on FDA’s fish advice chart

Does eel taste fishy?

No. Eel is among the mildest oily fish, and the cooking method makes it milder still. Japan’s tourism organization describes it: the eel is grilled, “steamed to remove excess fats,” then grilled again over charcoal with sauce, so it comes out “crispy and tasteful on the outside but soft and juicy inside.”

USDA’s record for cooked eel shows 15 g of fat per 100 g, but only about 0.19 g of it is the long-chain omega-3s (EPA and DHA) that give mackerel and sardines their strong, quick-to-turn flavor; a cured anchovy carries ten times as much. Eel’s fat is mostly monounsaturated (9.2 g), and that eats like richness, not like fish.

What does eel taste like in sushi?

Unagi nigiri is a slice of kabayaki eel laid warm over rice and brushed with tare, often with a pinch of sansho pepper. It tastes sweet, salty and faintly smoky. Anago nigiri is the lighter cousin: Japan’s agriculture ministry describes it as eel “simmered and cut into a fillet,” set on vinegared rice and “brushed with a sauce called ‘tsume,’” with a “mild yet sophisticated flavor.”

Both are fully cooked. There is no raw eel in sushi, for a safety reason covered below. In American eel rolls it is the same kabayaki, and the sauce does the talking.

Is eel sauce made of eel?

No. The sauce on unagi is tare, which the ministry’s Tokyo kabayaki recipe makes from sake, soy sauce and sugar simmered for ten minutes; the traditional mix was “soy sauce, sugar, and mirin.” Bottled “eel sauce” at US sushi bars is the same sweet soy reduction, with no eel in it.

One exception: the tsume brushed on anago at a traditional sushi counter starts with the eel’s head and bones simmered into a broth, then seasoned and reduced.

Unagi vs anago: what’s the difference?

“Unagi means freshwater eel in Japanese and is different from Anago the saltwater eel,” as JNTO puts it. Unagi has “a rich layer of fats as it is suitable for grilling”; anago is the conger eel, leaner, and usually simmered with sake, sugar and soy rather than grilled.

	Unagi	Anago
Fish	Freshwater eel (Anguilla)	Conger eel (sea)
Fat	High	Lower
Cooking	Grilled with tare (kabayaki)	Simmered, brushed with tsume
Flavor	Rich, sweet, lightly smoky	Mild, delicate
Texture	Soft and juicy with crisp edges	Fluffy, almost melting

What is the texture of eel?

Cooked eel separates into small, soft layers rather than big flakes, and the fat makes every bite feel buttery. Kanto-style kabayaki (Tokyo) is “split, skewered, grilled white, and steamed, then dipped in sauce and grilled again,” which makes it very tender; Kansai-style (Osaka) is opened from the belly and grilled “without steaming,” so the skin and edges come out crisper and chewier, per the MAFF profile.

Smoked eel, the European way to eat it, is a different animal: firm, dense and oily, peeling off the bone in strips. It belongs on rye with horseradish or in a smoked fish dip.

Is eel healthy, and is it safe to eat?

Per 100 g cooked, USDA lists 236 calories, 23.6 g protein, 15 g fat, 2.89 µg vitamin B12 and an unusually high 1,140 µg of vitamin A; the raw record adds 23.3 µg of vitamin D. It is also higher in cholesterol (161 mg) than most fish. Eel does not appear on the FDA’s mercury chart in any category.

The safety point is simple: eel must be cooked. Japan’s health ministry explains that the blood serum of eel-order fish, including unagi, anago and moray, contains a protein toxin that can cause diarrhea, vomiting, rashes, numbness and breathing trouble if raw blood is consumed. Heating at 60°C (140°F) for five minutes destroys it completely, and the ministry notes there is no official record of food poisoning from it in Japan with a normal diet. That is why eel is never served raw.

Where eel comes from, and why it costs more every year

Nearly all unagi is farmed, and the farms depend on wild-caught baby eels. The American eel’s life “begins and ends in the Sargasso Sea,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; larvae drift on currents for up to a year, arrive on the coast as transparent glass eels, then live in rivers and estuaries from Venezuela to Greenland and Iceland for five to more than 40 years, per the species profile.

Those glass eels, called elvers, are the catch that matters. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission reports that “since 2011, there has been a growing international demand for glass eels” for aquaculture, with Maine landing 9,634 pounds of elvers in 2023, and it calls the population “depleted in U.S. waters.” In Japan, where eel has been “an important delicacy” since the Edo period and is eaten on a midsummer day in late July for stamina, per the Smithsonian’s Museum of Asian Art, the agriculture ministry notes wild eel prices have climbed because fewer young eels are being caught.

Eel vs sablefish and salmon

If you cannot find eel, sablefish with a miso or soy glaze is the closest substitute: similar fat, similar soft flake, similar sweetness. Salmon belly works too, with more of the salmon’s own flavor. For the lean end of the scale, see tuna; for Florida’s own oily fish, Spanish mackerel.

Bottom line

Eel is rich, soft, sweet and mild, and the glaze is half the flavor. Order unagi don or unagi nigiri the first time, try anago if you want it lighter, and seek out smoked eel if you like smoked mackerel. Just never raw.

What Does Eel Taste Like?