Huge leap towards sustainable seafood revealed by restaurant survey
By Lewis Smith
November 27 2011 Lewis Smith
The Ivy was one of seven Caprice restaurants to get the top rating
The number of British restaurants choosing to serve sustainable seafood and dropping fish from overfished stocks has increased dramatically over the last two years, according to a Fish2fork survey.
More than 45 per cent of restaurants improved their rating in the first re-review of British restaurants by Fish2fork, the campaigning fish restaurant guide, since it was launched in 2009.
Among them are some of the biggest names in cuisine, including Scott's in London’s Mayfair and Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire, but also locally recognised restaurants, such as the Porthminster Beach Café in St Ives.
This huge leap towards the use of sustainably-caught seafood in the restaurant industry in just two years is regarded by conservationists as an unprecedented advance and the survey’s results are believed to be the first firm evidence of changing attitudes and priorities in the restaurant sector.
Fish2fork was set up as a campaigning online restaurant guide in the wake of the release of the award-winning documentary film, The End of the Line, which highlighted the way the seas were being emptied.
Research shows 82 per of the world’s fisheries are, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, fully exploited, overexploited, in decline or in recovery from overfishing.
Fish2fork’s aim was to drive change by judging restaurants on where their fish came from and their approach to sustainable sourcing.
Of the 443 restaurants Fish2fork has re-reviewed since the 2009 launch, more than two improved their rating for every one that slipped backwards. In all, 202 restaurants (45 per cent) improved their rating, 89 (20 per cent) got worse and 152 (34 per cent) remained the same.
There are also 97 restaurants getting their first score and of these 8 – including Harbour Lights, a local chippie in Falmouth - achieved the highest rating awarded so far of 4.5 blue fish. A second local chippie, The Bay Fish and Chips in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, was awarded 4 blue fish, the second highest rating, illustrating that it is perfectly possible for traditional fish and chip restaurants to match top London restaurants such as The Ivy in sustainability.
Charles Clover, founder of the Fish2fork website and author of The End of The Line, said: “To get 45 per cent of restaurants we reviewed last time improving their scores in two years is a phenomenal figure. Even though a few have slipped back, they are outnumbered more than two to one by those who have grasped that sustainability is now important to consumers of seafood.
“This re-review shows that the market has moved – partly as a result of what we have done with The End of the Line and Fish2fork. We are grateful for the endorsement we have had from leading proprietors and chefs, such as Richard Caring of Caprice Holdings, Raymond Blanc and Jamie Oliver, and the quantum shift in public awareness caused by the terrific Fishfight campaign run by Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall.
“Would that this message was heard as clearly elsewhere in Europe. At the moment the UK is showing the rest of Europe what can be done if restaurateurs create a demand for sustainably caught fish.”
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said: “Fish2fork is doing a great job of injecting a sense of responsibility over fish sourcing into the vital restaurant sector which is of course a massive consumer of fish. It is independent and uncompromising and by putting us restaurateurs on the spot makes fish sustainability an issue we can’t ignore without the risk of losing business. I also have a hunch that F2F’s clever rating system is getting a response by tapping into the competitive nature of some of our top chefs!”
Fish experts at the Marine Conservation Society, which compiles lists of seafood species that should be avoided by consumers because of overfishing and other problems, were delighted by the shift towards sustainability and praised the role of Fish2fork.
Richard Harrington, of the MCS, said: "The Marine Conservation Society is absolutely thrilled to see the impact Fish2Fork has had with restaurants, in such a short time of operation. The overall rise in sustainability ratings for the restaurants and chains is a genuine step forward.
"There are still far too many outlets offering their customers fish we consider to be unsustainable, despite the ease with which other varieties of fish can be obtained, and the obvious public interest in keeping fish in the sea for the long term future.
"Thanks to Fish2Fork, consumers are now able to make clear choices about where they can go to eat - other restaurants need to play catch-up to gain that custom back."
Caprice Holdings, which owns and runs several leading restaurants including The Ivy, J Sheekey and Scott's, is one of the organizations that now place sustainability at the top of their agenda.
Their seven top London restaurants now all score 4.5 blue fish, the highest score Fish2fork has yet awarded. To do so they had to improve the level of information available to customers and to take hard-pressed species, including the endangered eel and blonde ray, off their menus.
Tim Hughes, the chef director at Caprice Holdings, said public attitudes to fish were changing. Little more than a decade ago he experimented with species such as pollock and gurnard but found little appetite for them, whereas now there was a demand for them and for other replacements for over-fished species such as cod.
“We are very conscious about overfishing and discards. It’s our duty to try as hard as possible to know where we get our fish from and to get it from sustainable sources,” he said.
Other improvements noticed by Fish2fork, which are to the credit of the chefs and proprietors involved, are that Restaurant Martin Wishart in Edinburgh has taken wild Atlantic halibut off the menu. The Fishy Fishy chain removed skate, the Cape Town restaurant dropped eel, while the Porthminster Beach Café stopped serving plaice caught off the South West and wild-caught halibut.
Among the restaurants that notched up the biggest improvements since they were last reviewed were Gamba, Scott’s, The Square, J Sheekey, The Captain’s Gallery, Yo Sushi, One-O-One, The Ferryboat Inn and two Wright Brothers restaurants.
In 2009 only two restaurants – Am Birlinn and Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles – managed to get a rating as high as 4.5 blue fish but in 2011 the number has risen to 27. They include The Captain’s Galley in Scrabster, the Porthminster Beach Cafe in St Ives, Raymond Blanc’s two-Michelin starred Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons as well as the entire Caprice Holdings group.
Another recipient of 4.5 blue fish is the Duke of Cambridge gastropub founded by Geetie Singh in London. She was delighted to see her rating rise from 4 blue fish: "I feel very proud of it. I know how well thought out and meticulous Fish2fork’s approach has been. We get all sorts of accolades and they don’t always mean much but this one from Fish2fork does."
In a further reflection of progress towards the sourcing of fish from sustainable stocks, the number of restaurants getting the lowest possible rating of 5 red fish has fallen from four in 2009 to just one today – Nobu, which persists in serving bluefin tuna, an endangered species.
Restaurants with Michelin stars have done better than average in improving their marine sustainability ratings, arguably a reflection of their understanding of the better-resourced restaurateur’s ability to appoint staff to deal with sustainability as well as other compliance issues.
Of the 22 Michelin-starred restaurants that have been rated by Fish2fork, 16 improved their record, four got worse, one remained the same and one was new to the reviewing process.
Since Fish2fork began campaigning, bluefin tuna has largely disappeared from menus in the UK. One of the last Fish2fork-rated restaurants to serve it was the Silver Darling in Aberdeen, but the chef has now decided to drop it.
With the battle against serving the over-fished bluefin tuna close to an end in the UK – though not in mainland Europe or Japan where far too many restaurants still insist on serving it – the focus of Fish2fork is turning to other struggling species.
Fish2fork is especially concerned about the plight of the European eel which has suffered slumps of up to 80 per cent among the adult populations (90 per cent if counting the glass eel stage of their life cycle as they reach Europe from the Sargasso Sea).
A factor that has helped the drive to sustainability since Fish2fork launched in 2009 is the decision by chefs at the Relais & Chataux hotel and restaurant chain to issue a six-point pledge in which they recognised “devastating levels of excessive fishing” and promised to stop serving bluefin and other endangered seafood species, and to buy from sustainable stocks.
Among celebrity restaurants in this year’s survey, the likes of Gordon Ramsay (Restaurant Gordon Ramsay), Nathan Outlaw (Restaurant Nathan Outlaw) and Tom Aikens (Restaurant Tom Aikens) all improved their record. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who early this year generated huge public support for his campaign against discards, was a new entry with his Axminster Canteen and Deli which also got Fish2fork’s highest rating of 4.5 blue fish.
Jamie Oliver’s 15 London and Jamie’s Italian were both new to the Fish2fork guide and achieved an impressive 4 blue fish each. Oddly, Raymond Blanc got a top 4.5 rating for Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons yet his Brasserie Blanc chain slipped from 3 blue fish to 1.5 blue fish. David Moore (Pied a Terre) slipped in his rating. Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow went up from 0.5 red to 0.5 blue.
Of the chains, Feng Sushi’s 6 branches all achieved the top rating of 4.5 blue fish, as did the 3 branches of Lussmanns Eatery. George’s Tradition (10 branches), Livebait (4 branches), Loch Fyne (43 branches), and San Carlo (6 branches) all improved. So, too, did Yo Sushi with its 52 branches which achieved one of the highest rises, from 0.5 blue fish to 4 four blue. However, Brasserie Blanc with 9 branches, Harry Ramsden with 32 branches and Hi Sushi with 4 branches were downrated while Wagamama with 71 branches and La Tasca with 62 branches both remained static at 0.5 red fish.
Editor’s notes: Fish2fork rates restaurants on the basis of the sustainability of the seafood species they serve (see the page on our ratings system), and the quantity and quality of the information they provide to their customers.
Ratings range from 4.5 blue fish, the highest yet awarded, to 5 red fish. It is theoretically possible to be awarded a 5 blue fish rating but no one has done it yet.
While more than 45 per cent of restaurants have improved their ratings over the last two years, the marking in 2011 has been tougher. The marking down for serving European eel, now regarded as a critically endangered species, has been particularly stiff.
One of the more controversial issues has been that of cod. Until earlier this month the scientific advice was that cod in the Celtic Sea off South West England should be treated, like North Sea cod, as a fish to avoid. It is now considered an acceptable fishery so this has been taken into account in the marking and the reviews.
Where there is doubt about the source of a fish to avoid, and the information is not provided on the restaurant's menu, website or sourcing policy, expert opinion has been carefully used to gauge whether, geographically, it was likely that a restaurant was sourcing a fish from an overfished stock or not. We have adjusted our scoring to ensure no restaurant is marked down for any change in rating by MCS that was not in our questionnaire at the beginning of the re-review period.
Fish2fork’s reviews are on a downloadable iPhone app, compiled jointly with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s FishFight, which has already been downloaded by nearly 100,000 people. A new update is now available.
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