Actions speak louder than words they say, and though I would be a complete philistine to so simply brush off the great literature and rallying calls that the men and women of this little planet have produced over history, in some cases it is a great truism. I have known for some time that all is not well on the aforementioned little planet, especially in my minuscule world of food. It is hard to encapsulate the exact causes but I am going to settle with the word “over”. A little word that says it all, we are over fishing and if we don’t stop it is going to be all over (as far as the fishing heritage this generation is in charge of is concerned)
This is of course not a new problem but has, over the past few years, become an increasing concern to the public. This is of course a wonderful thing, fishmongers, retailers and restaurants can lead, but the public must follow, or better still demand. I do not know of an allegedly aware generation like mine, who, in a such a small time span has had such and effect on a species. We happily ignored history; whales, American bison and many more besides. When I first started cooking, salmon was amongst culinary royalty, seabass a commoner and monkfish the very poor man’s lobster. At the turn of the last century, one of England’s great dishes, steak and kidney pie, was served as steak, kidney and oyster, not for because of any culinary tour de force, but because oysters were cheap and plentiful and used as make weights. Simply put our eating habits regarding fish are over.
This change does not come easily, and at the Manoir and in the Brasseries, we have been working very hard on this for some years. Immediately I saw that the solution was not going to be simple. The end result was easy, quality fish that my guests would enjoy. To start with the problem was information, there are just under 30,000 species of fish (not all edible) so including all the sub species, and the numbers melt your brain. Add farmed fish to the mix, the fabled solution but only if you discount the possible quality and the effect these farms have on the local environment. Finding a trustful partner with the knowledge and vision was not easy. Sometimes these various organisation gave us contrary information. I can’t blame them, gathering correct information from neat and far, at sea, throughout the year is an unenviable task. After an enormous amount of work, I finally got there. The work was rewarded with the recent awards by Fish2 fork, placing the Manoir top of the league and the Brasseries in the top 10 restaurants in the UK.
This, however, is not about blowing our own horn; I called this piece fishy business for a reason. Cheap food is cheap for a reason, fish is no different. There is a price to pay for all this, whether wild or farmed, quality fish is even more expensive these days and I hope that the public understand this. The easiest example is chicken, I can go and buy a chicken in a supermarket for under £3.50 or at the top end I would not get much change from £30. Both are chickens but the similarity stops there; the taste and the type of farming will differ wildly. So here is the point of this sermon, I know that compared to many the Manoir and the Brasseries fish dishes slightly steeper, but they like that for a reason and a bloody good one at that. I really think that the industry as a whole should follow the same approach.
There is a risk that whole chapters of cookery books will be consigned to the history section of libraries, dishes will take on mythical status and old men like me will be asked what we did in the fish wars.
The choice is ultimately yours, especially tough in such difficult times I understand, but I have made mine.





