When it comes to dishing up sustainably caught seafood chefs are starting to walk the talk. But it costs, and it seems most customers are watching their wallets - and remain to be convinced of the merits of favourable ethics over favourite fish. Kathy Ombler spoke with Wellington chefs and restaurateurs about sustainability, quality, cost - and cool signature dishes.
Shae Moleta, Ambeli Restaurant co-owner and Cuisine Restaurant of the Year Best Personality 2010, grew up in the Marlborough Sounds. As a boy, he remembers shedding tears of rage watching the scallop boats rape the bays.
“I’d watch the boats dredging and wait for the broken shells and undersized dead scallops to wash ashore. The beach would smell for a week. Then every weekend we’d see the pleasure boats grazing up and down with their sonar, pulling in tiny fish. There was no sport or skill, and if you wanted to find any decent size groper or cod, forget it. We used to be able to haul up any rock off D’Urville Island and there’d be a crayfish underneath, not now.
“That’s the context around how important it is for me to be comfortable about how the produce landing on my doorstep has been harvested. I want to run the kind of restaurant so that when my great grandson thinks about me he can hold his head high.”
Chef Dave Thurlow has a similar philosophy. Four years ago he moved away from the big name city restaurants and became a partner in Mirimar’s new Café Polo.
“I moved to the suburbs to have more control in my life. Sustainability is important to me and free-range and organic produce and line-caught fish are part of the bigger picture. Farming, not strip-mining, is the difference between long-line fishing and nets and the fishermen I know are responsible in the way they handle fish.”
Thurlow doesn’t have a problem with by-catch as long as those fish are used.
“In the UK people don’t throw out the small fish like here, where small fish are chucked back dead to ensure top prices for big fish.”
But is there customer demand for fish caught in an ethical manner, albeit it more expensive? Thurlow has his doubts, especially with the current tight economy.
“Perhaps in a time of financial buoyancy people would be willing to pay $3 or $4 more for a lunch dish. I could probably sell more fish cheaper at a lesser quality but I chose not to.”
However he says people are getting better educated, with help from initiatives such as Forest & Bird’s “Best Fish Guide”. (This ranks the ecological sustainability of seafood species sourced from our commercial fisheries.) Yet he still has customers hitting him up saying he should be serving tuna and others listed as ‘worst fish’ in the guide.
“I’d rather that we could serve those fish because we had improved their stocks with better fishing methods and drift net bans. We want people saying they are happy to pay a bit more for fish because the way it’s been caught hasn’t involved stripping the sea floor.”
However, both Thurlow and Moleta see a shimmer of the light switching on. We’re riding a crest, says Thurlow.
“As people become more aware of how our food is produced and our fish caught we’ll be over the hump and gathering momentum. It’s happening already overseas.”
Moleta says when his menu describes line-caught snapper, people appreciate there has been a conscious effort made to obtain sustainable produce. “I think if there was orange roughy on the menu we would get some pretty dirty looks, (orange roughy ranks the least sustainable fish on the F&B Guide). It’s the same as the need to specify organic, free range pork and chicken.”
The good news is there are more suppliers out there who also think about where their produce comes from, and how it’s harvested. Ambeli, Café Polo and the Museum Art Hotel’s Hippopotamus Restaurant all procure from Yellow Brick Road, a company with a strong sustainability focus that sources fish from Leigh Fisheries, who work out of Leigh, the location of New Zealand’s oldest marine reserve.
Moleta feels comfortable about this.
“I approve of a future where New Zealand is more thoughtful about conservation of marine life. A marine reserve is also a wonderful ‘granary’ (or nursery) and we can catch with prudence the overflow.”
Moleta is also comfortable about serving Tio Point Oysters, grown by a family operation in Marlborough that began farming mussels and now successfully seeds and raises Bluff oysters.
“They are among the first commercial aquaculturalists in New Zealand and I’m really proud to serve their products.”
Another supplier attracting Moleta’s discerning attention is Cloudy Bay Clams, who have designed a non-invasive, rake-like harvester to gather surfs clams in Cloudy Bay.
“From what I understand this special dredge is actually enhancing the seabed, like it’s ploughing a field.”
With doubt remaining over diners’ taste for sustainability, there are certainly more appreciating quality, says Thurlow.
“We get a lot of comments like: ‘I’ve never eaten a fish that doesn’t smell like a fish’. That’s telling. There is a growing percentage of people appreciating that and we need that awareness to make it financially viable. (Meanwhile) I take the hit in my pocket and I need to be getting better margins.”
Even at the fine dining Hippopotamus Restaurant in a five-star hotel, chef Laurent Loudeac has trouble with cost of quality local seafood, and managing the bottom line.
“In the fish market in Sydney I found New Zealand fish and shellfish cheaper than in Wellington. I understand there is more money in exporting but there is something wrong when we get the leftovers, and have to pay so much for quality so we can promote good New Zealand produce.
“We try to offer crayfish, only on the room service menu however at the price you have to pay it is unrealistic. You can’t afford to have it in if you’re not sure it’s going to sell.”
When you do get quality fish, treating it with respect is important, says Thurlow.
“Consistent quality of fish comes from the fishermen, the guys who have the passion and for whom fishing isn’t just a pay check. So I am careful with the filleting to ensure maximum yield, not just for the financial reason but because those fishermen have gone to the effort to get it to my kitchen in good condition I have a responsibility to use as much as I can.”
Loudeac agrees the quality depends on the way it is fished.
“You rely on the fishermen, we can get quality seafood however the challenge is the consistency and cost. Snapper is the main fish I can get year round. I get it from Yellow Brick Road and when their boats can’t go out because of the weather then I look to other, bigger suppliers, it will be well cooled down but it won’t be as fresh.
“I know I can always get snapper and if I have two fish dishes on the menu I’ll go for groper, sword fish or kingfish. I like big, robust fish. Terakihi and trevally are too thin and you can only sear them very quickly so they don’t dry out,” he adds.
He certainly needs a ‘robust’ texture when he matches, as he does, catch of the day on polenta crumble with beef cheek cannelloni.
Mark Limacher, partner at Ortega Fish Shack, welcomes new suppliers.
“As in other areas of food production and service we’ve thankfully seen more specialist and boutique suppliers taking a lot more care and setting new standards in quality and delivery. This is not before time as a decade or two ago some in the seafood industry had a very much take it or leave it attitude.
“We now have a number of trusted suppliers with whom we are in contact on a daily basis. This combined with a small, flexible menu and stringent storage procedures ensure we give it our best shot to live up to guest expectations for quality seafood.”
Limacher also welcomes a more adventurous trend from his diners.
“I’ve noticed there is a much greater willingness to order unfamiliar species, perhaps this is a reflection of a sophisticated dining out public who consider sustainability in their gastronomic decision making.”
Thurlow also sees a trend to try new fish, for example porae.
“One factor is that I have a really good front of house team who are happy to encourage diners to try these things; people who have traditionally thought if it’s not snapper or groper, we don’t want it.”
Moleta would be happy to serve lots of different species throughout the year.
“Tiny quotas and short seasons - I love seasonality - if I can get something for only three weeks a year that makes it special. It would be fantastic to change the menu more, and for New Zealanders to wake up and want sustainable, ethically harvested seafood. You might have to dig a bit deeper, but if restaurants aren’t leading the charge who else is going to pick it up.”
Mostly, Limacher believes guests recognise the integrity in serving simple, fresh tasty and ‘un-cheffy’ dishes at moderate prices.
“We have a strong cross-cultural element to our menu, but our aim is always to show our raw products off at their best.”
Thurlow says one of Caf?Polo’s most popular dishes is a simple fish fillet on celeriac puree, with wilted spinach and fondant potato.
’ll put a snapper or groper on that and we can’t keep it in the kitchen. We also do a fish fillet on panzanella, an Italian bread salad. It’s very rustic, we make the salad with maybe a ciabatta, torn basil, roasted capsicum, tomatoes, cucumbers, chilli, capers and anchovies and put a warm piece of seared fish on top, with a bit of salsa verde. That contrast of warm and cold; it’s one of our most popular dishes.”
One fish offering on the current Ambeli menu; pan roasted line caught fish and crispy squid with red wine, panacetta and pearl barley risotto, was acclaimed thus in a recent review: “The bluenose … may change your thinking forever on how to serve a white fish fillet”.
At Hippopotamus Loudeac relies on farmed salmon, sourced from Wellington Trawling Company, for his signature dish “Salmon sashimi my way”.
The sashimi is also a visual spectacle; a line of raw cubed salmon comes on a long platter, each cube added to progressively until the final cube, which is presented with a taste of soy jelly, cucumber, marinated wakame and sesame seeds.
“The salmon supply and quality is very consistent, we tried this dish with tuna originally however, surprisingly perhaps, we sell more salmon,” says Loudeac.
Another tick for sustainability.