I can not speak for all asiatic restaurant owners in London, Berlin or Paris, but most chefs specialized in serving raw fishes do not joke about this and avoid the problem using special ultra-freezers. This reduces the safety-time to several hours (It is known that Anisakis larvae can survive for about a week in a domestic freezer) and helps to keep the quality of the sashimi. Thus, when you hear 'fresh', you probably should decode this as 'ultra-frozen in fresh' as something totally natural.

The cut of sashimi in translucent fine lames is probably a way to detect and clean the fish of any visible parasites before to serve it. Exposing the beauty of the fish muscle in intrincated designs you are also showing the client that your product is of optimum quality and totally clean.

Here's the UK implementation: https://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/fish-shellfish/fre...

I'm not sure if this archived page is still accurate: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20150624093026/htt...

Many types of fish used for sushi in Japan have been frozen at some point because commercial trawlers spend weeks if not months at sea, and the catch has to be frozen or left to spoil.

It's the same in the US. If a restaurant is claiming the fish is not frozen, they are breaking the law and eating the fish is significantly more dangerous.

I am not sure about Europe, but that's the law in the US too (there are a few exceptions).