A tipping point has clearly been crossed because all of a sudden the need for sustainable fishing practices is everywhere. And not just at The Slow Cook, which I read religiously, despite my lack of interest in cooking. It’s also here, here and – oh, everywhere.
So I was primed to try the new Georgetown hot spot Hook, the first restaurant in D.C. that adheres strictly to sustainable fishing practices. Chef Barton Seaver, called a "visionary" in this Washington Post review, visits all his suppliers to make sure they’re not using such widespread practices as overfishing, collection techniques that destroy habitat, or farming with the use of antibiotics.
So how do sustainable fish taste? Like real food, the real meat of
creatures of the sea, but with a touch of Barton’s culinary magic. I’m no food critic but yum!
Each customer receives a wallet-sized brochure outlining in detail the fish to avoid and the fish to eat with impunity, a brochure brought to us with the help of Patagonia and the Blue Ocean Institute. (The brochure’s supposed to be on line here, but that link isn’t working at the moment.) And Earth Echo International is also involved somehow and my dinner companion was their secretary-treasurer, the charming Jan Cousteau, whom I’d met at the DC opening of "The Green" on the Sundance Channel.
So that’s what I was doing at a "glam new watering hole" that’s "swimming with the young and pretty." A little off my usual beat.
Photo of Jan Cousteau and Chef Barton Seaver, taken with a camera whose flash wasn’t working at that particular moment.
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If you like a good read and want to read more on sustainable fishing and Chilean seabass and it’s almost demise, I recommend “Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish”. My degree is marine biology and it didn’t take long for me to realize in my classes that fishing was not sustainable. So, I only eat what my husband catches and don’t eat it at restaurants and don’t even touch shrimp. Shrimping is just devastating practice that has destroyed ecosystems. And it’s almost impossible to find out where you get something. Even farmed is bad, especially when it is over seas because the pollutants almost always affect water quality. Anyway, I could go off in tangents, but this really piqued my interest and so I clicked over from GR.
“End of the Line” is a good read on this topic too. I’ve been eating only sustainable fish for the past 10 years or so. It sucks cos all the things I really liked are unsustainable (every time I see monkfish on a menu its like something out of faust plays out in my head)
Not really off-topic, Susan, because all of these trends are converging into one large issue of how we live on the planet sustainably, be it through the act of eating or the act of gardening. Gardeners need to eat, too, and they should be concerned about how their choices affect the world’s oceans, which are being devastated by world-wide factory fishing that can only continue by grace of our indifference.
I agree with the choice of reading mentioned above, and would add “The Empty Ocean,” by Richard Ellis, as well as “The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat,” by Charles Clover.
Oh, and thanks for being a loyal read of The Slow Cook…
There’s lots of good info on this issue on a section of the Monterey Bay Aquarium website – http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp.
My problem is that when I catch a trout or a bass, wild, from the 90 acre glacial lake alongside which we live (just about the most natural fish you could eat)… I can’t bear to knock them on the head so back they go… And then I’m off to the store to buy salmon or pollock or telapia. Hypocritical? Yes. Perhaps I should just give up eating fish altogether.
Just off the coast of New Zealand they began an experiment about 20 years ago. A ‘no fish zone’ of about a hundred square miles. In just that short period of time this zone is simply teeming and teeming with good sea life. The plus has been that just outside that ‘no fish zone’ there is a super abundance of fish for the whole country. That’s natural fish farming – let nature do it itself!
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a cool little chef exhibit too, and in Pacific Grove Passionfish is committed to using the sustainable recommendations supplied…by that little brochure. Which brings me to the point: it’s important to get the information out and help people make sustainable decisions, but how many people actually cart around and consult these brochures? Have you seen anybody whipping them out at the local chowderhouse? At the fishmonger? Or are they just so many well-meaning dead trees?
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