|
• Slow Fish
The base line: Slow Fish don’t
talk. Somebody needs to speak for them. Each
day tons of fish are caught and most of their bio mass
is quasi wasted. Oceans are depleted. The top layer
of our ocean is over fished. Large species are on the
way to extinction. Applying the recommendations of the
Monterey Bay Aquarium, at the Seaweed Café, we
have drawn the base line defining what is Slow Fish
for us, what fish can be safely consumed, fish that
can be consumed with caution and fish that cannot be
consumed in our restaurant and on the Sonoma Coast.
These three categories frame the dialogue around what
is sustainable fishing and Slow Fish consumption.
 |
Jean
Michel Cousteau & Jackie Martine at the Seaweed
Cafe. While filming his program on the state of
Us Marine Sancturaies, Jean Michel talked Jackie
into abandonning using Monkfish. This was a breakthrough
which liberated us from a conventional menu. |
Local and seasonal fish:
If for example we want to halt the worldwide slaughter
of tuna or Chilean sea bass, we have to be mindful and
stop serving them on our tables. This is why you will
not see any endangered fish being served at the Seaweed
Café. This certainly has required us to invent
new menu planning strategy and anchor it on what is
available only in the local waters and /or on the local
boats in any given season. Initially we were worried
about menu diversity, and concerned that we wouldn’t
be able to offer a wide enough choice of fish on our
menu to please our customers. Our experience has shown
us that our customers have been very appreciative of
our choices. The public attracted by the Seaweed Café
Slow Fish program is in fact very enthusiastic to discover
or taste Slow Fish preparation that they never or seldom
had the opportunity to taste elsewhere. By supporting
us the public is also supporting our choices. We also
discovered that in our cooking practice, by using fewer
ingredients we are getting more culinary intensity.
Having less of a variety of fish to choose from forces
us to really think on how to maximize the use of any
given fish. Far from reducing our creativity, the self
imposed limitation of using only local seasonal fishes
has for effect of intensifying our creative urge to
get more interpretation out of each given fish.
|
|
Small Fishing Boat
in front of
Hog Island on Tamales Bay |
Support the local fishermen:
If we don’t want to see more fishing villages
and fishing boats disappear from our coasts, it is urgent
to support local cuisine made out of local Slow Fish,
coming from the local boats. Our strategy to cook only
the local fish is a strategy to support the local fishermen.
We are fully aware that commodity economy
dictates what is worth collecting, fishing or farming.
Based on the perceived needs of the global market fishing
fleets go after certain animal species and depleted
them in matter of a few years. To a vast degree, industrial
fishing has evolved along the same line as industrial
farming. In the same way as you have monoculture –
the cultivation of single crop, so do you have mono
fishing, the catching of single fish specie. Specialization
has become the norm and fleets have been equipped to
catch one, two or three species. Very sophisticated
methods of fish detection by sonar or satellites allow
boats to track fish and to harvest huge quantities that
can be instantly frozen. State of the art refrigeration
allows boats to stay at sea for very long period of
time and reach water very far from their home base.
The end result is that there is less and less wild fish
around.
On the Marin and Sonoma Coast, the result
of this commodity driven mono fishing is that the population
of Sea Urchin or of Herring (which are in high demand
on the Asian market) have been extremely depleted. After
a quick boomtown economy that created some money and
kept boats afloat, once the local animal stock was depleted
and all the Uni or Herring Roe was shipped abroad, the
boats couldn’t go at sea anymore and the fishermen
when into unemployment. Those are examples of industrial
ravage of single specie fishing or mono-fishing. The
harvesting intensity that is deployed against a given
specie at certain time is such that at a certain point
it can’t keep up enough of a critical mass to
reproduce naturally and abundantly. Catching unbearable
amounts of female fish with their roe of course limits
the ability of fish specie to reproduce, and diminish
the genetic pool of the specie, which in turn diminishes
its ability to stay healthy and vigorous.
 On
the Sonoma Coast, Rock Cods are another example of over
fishing and wasted biomass. For many years instead of
cooking and eating the whole fish, the public was convinced
that rock cod had to be consumed only as filets. For
the fishermen and fisherwomen the result was that most
of the bio mass of the rock cods –the head, the
skin and the bones had to be thrown back in the ocean
or that all the cods that were too small to be cut into
filet of 5 ounces had also to be thrown back into the
ocean dead.
Along the northern California Coast,
Wild Salmon population decline is critical. Over fishing
is certainly a direct cause but river dams, urbanization
and roadwork along the coast of the pacific are equally
important. Each time that the direct flow of a small
gulch or brook into the ocean is interrupted, more natural
reproductive habitat for salmon disappear. The cumulative
effect of cement and asphalt on the coast in conjunction
with over damming and over fishing is the main cause
of salmon population depletion. Salmon cannot go back
to their traditional spawning grounds. Future wild salmon
generations are at risk.
Over the years, intense mono fishing,
fish population decline, climate change and commodity
pricing have contributed to marginalize small independent
fishermen and fisherwomen and the biodiversity of local
fish that they were previously able to provide to the
local markets is steadily disappearing as well as the
knowledge by the home cook on how to prepare such fishes.
 |
| Paul Johnson at the Seaweed Cafe
for the 2007 Slow Fish Fund Raiser. |
Paul Johnson owns the Monterey Fish Market and is the
author of Fish Forever. Paul has been a tremendous force
behind sustainable fishing, promoting the necessity
of responsible fishing since opening his fish wholesale
business in 1979. Jackie Martine and Paul Johnson go
way back, Jackie when the chef of Augusta restaurant
in Berkeley was in fact Paul’s third restaurant
client after Chez Panisse and Hayes Street Grill.
These are the reasons why we have articulated at the
Seaweed Café a strategy to support seasonal,
local sustainable fish and sustainable fisheries. As
a matter of rule we select for our seasonal menu fish,
shellfish or crustaceans that only come from our local
or regional waters.
By local water we mean first the coast directly in
front of Bodega Bay, Tamales Bay and along the Sonoma
coast up to Fort Bragg. By regional waters, we mean
as far south as Monterey Bay and as far north as Alaska
where it is quite common for Bodega Bay boats to go
fishing. In all case we certainly give priority to fish
and crustacean caught by Bodega Bay boats
 |
| Bodega Bay boats rigged for salmon
line fishing. |
At the Seaweed Café, whenever it is possible,
we make a point to go on the wharf to get the fish directly
off the boat as it is berthing. This way, we get to
know the fisherman or the fisherwoman, their boat and
their fishing methods. We have ultra fresh fish and
gain from this exchange invaluable knowledge, which
in turn inform our cooking. As to oysters we get them
directly in Tamales Bay right off the water. This is
what we call Direct Pristine Food Sourcing. There is
a huge flavor difference between an oyster that is picked
directly off the water and an oyster that has been transiting
for hours on trucks or plane.
Understanding nonetheless that, due to increasing human
demands, the sustainable fishing of wild species has also
its limits, at the Seaweed Café, we have made a
commitment to use local farmed fish and shellfish whenever
possible and whenever safe. We do not use farmed fish
fed with a diet made of biomass superior to the one that
the fish itself will provide. We do not use any fish that
is genetically modified or fed growth hormones. We do
not use any farmed salmon preferring to use exclusively
local wild salmon when in season. To minimize
biomass waste, knowing full well that fish have always
much better taste when cooked with their skin and on
the bone, we have been showcasing fish preparations
that use the whole fish, either steamed, fried or as
fish soups, Such preparations use the whole fish instead
of filets only. We also have made a practice to serve
fish with their skin and when possible with their bones
as in Sturgeon Osso Bucco. This is what we call our
No Waste Food.
 |
| Scott Zahl our oyster farmer friend
on his raft in Marconi Cove on Tamales Bay |
Developing relationships with local fishermen has
also allowed us to get to know what kind of fishes are
on the boats before they come back to the harbor and
thus to adjust our menu to their catch. Such has been
the introduction on our menu of Pacific Skate Wing a
fish that we truly enjoy for its silky texture and for
the fact that it doesn’t come from the East Coast
or Europe. We have a strong policy that we call No
Kerosene Food, meaning that we reject foods that
need kerosene fuel to be flown from other part of the
continent and the planet. We believe those foods that
leave a large carbon footprint are fundamentally toxic
to the environment. To the discerning mind, the best
lobster flown from Maine will somehow have trace taste
of jet fuel.
 |
| Arrival of a crabber at Paisano
dock in Bodega Bay Harbor |
Restoring a sense of place and time.
In no case are we advocating a narrow-minded autarchy
but instead we are articulating a flexible approach
to defend both endangered fish species, endangered local
fish industries and to restore a sense of place and
time. In an era of high ubiquity where public space
is more and more homogenized, where shopping malls in
Santa Monica are the same than in Pittsburgh, Seattle,
Boston or Phoenix, the planet is shrinking and human
experience is impoverished. It is important to bring
anew an appreciation for what a gorgeous environment
like the Sonoma Coast has to offer that is specific
to such a place, what particular riches it can give,
what true flavors it holds. What we are inviting people
to do is to go visit us as well as discover all around
the planet the true taste that each individual local
environment has to offer at each different season.
 New
Food Frugality: At the Seaweed Café
we also have made an important choice in using essentially
local fish, shellfish and crustaceans. In restricting
our menu choice to local and regional products we have
made a policy of No Vanity Food. We have affirmed that
one can live and eat happily on the Sonoma Coast without
John Dory from France or Chilean Sea Bass from the southern
hemisphere and affirm quite simply that we are seeing
the emergence of a New Food Frugality. Vanity food tends
to reinforce social status and thus keeps people apart
while the new convivial food frugality of eating locally
and in season brings people together. And for us there
is nothing better that to enjoy a great meal of pristine
local seasonal foods surrounded by friends and people
who appreciate the simple things in life.
Healdsburg
Stealhead Festival
|
