Good Fish

An article in the luxurious-to-the touch paper version of our local entertainment paper whetted my appetite. There was good fish in Vancouver..  There have been waves of good fish flooding where humans live here, and nourishing the trees for longer than any humans. A lot of good things have grown here. Ideas too. Is that what makes the sustainable seafood meme thrive here? Maybe Chef Robert Clark would know. I'd enjoyed his seafood at C in 2005, maybe the best scallop I've ever eaten. Far more impressive to me has been his advocacy for sustainable seafood, and one of our local delicacies, the spot prawn. A decade ago this wasn't a high profile issue that I noticed, but with the local tentacles of Green organizations, several of which I've been associated with, there is a consciousness on oceanic issues that may go back to Jacques Coustean and Flipper on TV, if not our first nations' relationships to their protein source. Not just my local fish stores but local chain or even American stores like Safeway brag about their sustainable seafood, and ask you to visit their websites. My local frozen meat store chain M&M even advertises sustainable seafood in its freezers. There is obviously a market here.
Why not elsewhere? If Japan changed its seafood consumption, the downward spiral of fish species could stop. Look at what Yao Ming has done to the consumption of shark's fin soup in China. It can be done and needs to be done before there is no more seafood to eat for anybody. . I suggested the San Francisco Bay area, Japan and Quebec with world cuisine altering credentials and he mentioned that he was from Gaspe. A much deeper food culture than trendy Vancouver. Food needed a Quebec connection to succeed there, he suggested. I certainly felt that in my visits to its stores and Cideries on recent visits But all places do. If you live in a place, you treasure what you can enjoy there. Let's keep those. In his book Fat Chance, Dr. Robert Lustig states: "Life's too short to eat bad food, even if it's cheap... It's one of the true enjoyments of life. Yet familiarity breeds greater cravings. Ask Philadelphians about their cheese-steaks, New Orleans denizens about their Po-Boys and beignets or Memphians about their barbecue." Why can't Quebecois be equally passionate about their traditional fish dishes along with maple syrup and poutine? If the Japanese tradition of seafood cuisine brings about the nonexistence of seafood, so much for that tradition. To whom is that not obvious?
After talking to the chef on the phone, I went to the Fish Counter with my friend the following day. The same friend who dragged me off to a Greenpeace meeting when the organization was just in Vancouver, in 1973.The clam chowder was interesting. Not really Boston. Far from Manhattan. Different. We also ordered the halibut fish and chips. The best halibut I've had in Vancouver. We have excellent fish stores in North Vancouver. I remember how proudly the owner of our closest fish store was when she got the Ocean Wise certification. Her customers must have been just as delighted. And the fish store at Lonsdale Quay is major league. Yet from neither store have I ever had halibut this good. Is because of the great homemade tartar sauce? Not exactly. It's because it's the best halibut the chef could find, this piece from Haida Gwai (also known as The Queen Charlotte Islands). Perfectly cooked. Chef Clark told me he got into the sustainable seafood thing because the sustainable fish he was acquiring just tasted better. We all follow our taste buds.
  Sustainable seafood and organic food are not just relics of the Hippies. They are increasingly economic engines. I would imagine the owners of Las Vegas casinos where some of the world's best chefs offer up their creations, want their hotel guests to be depressed about their gambling losses more than about the destruction of fish species their dinner choices are bringing about. Perhaps that's just my imagination, but the sustainable seafood meme is thriving in Vancouver and it can in other places as well. To quote John Maynard Keynes, "the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared to the gradual encroachment of ideas."