Eating Fish the Sustainable Way

Making sensible seafood choices is just an URL away

by Patricia Kutza

I remember the buzz when Monterey Bay Aquarium opened its doors to the public back in the eighties.   Its innovative exhibits and gorgeous Pacific coast setting quickly put this place squarely on the map as a must-see destination.   But its most lasting legacy may be linked to a remarkable program that started here.  Its  principles are gaining momentum around the world.

It’s called Seafood Watch, a program dedicated to identifying sustainable seafood, seafood with growth patterns that  can sustain future consumption without  negatively impacting its surrounding  environment.   Since its inception in the late nineties, this program has greatly extended its reach with a series of effective marketing campaigns, like the distribution of its free  regional Seafood Watch pocket guides that can be downloaded at the Aquarium’s website (http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.asp).

These guides help consumers make smart and eco-friendly choices at the seafood counter of their local market as well as while dining out.

The Aquarium’s Sustainable Foods Institute, in its fourth year by 2009,  has become a driving force for stimulating discussion about the challenges of moving sustainable and organic cuisine into the status quo of the food & wine industry.  For the last three years I’ve had the  pleasure and honor of attending this wonderful conference, hearing academic and industry experts share their perspectives about a wide range of environmental issues that have global as well as local impacts.

One of the very smart strategies the Aquarium did early on was to connect the Seafood Watch program and the Sustainable Food Institute with their immensely popular Cooking for Solutions event.  This gala affair, open to the public, brings together a stellar lineup of celebrity chefs from around the globe who serve up their environmentally friendly signature dishes.  In 2008 Solutions guests also got to sample plenty of sustainable wines from forty-eight West Coast wineries and  taste gourmet specialties from fifty-five local restaurants. 

Word of mouth plus effective publicity has transformed Cooking for Solutions into the penultimate ‘people-watchers’ event.  The huge crowds add lots of  energy to this  innovative wine and food gala.  As much as I love to sample so much variety, I eventually long for more privacy and a comfortable chair.

This year I found both and a lot more at Passionfish, a restaurant that takes the sustainable seafood principle very seriously.  Located in Pacific Grove, about fifteen minutes drive south of Monterrey,  this comfortable eatery is owned and operated by chef Ted Walter and his wife Cindy Walker.  The Walters name, through their legislative advocacy efforts and educational forums,  has become synonymous with implementing sustainable and environmentally-friendly purchasing practices.

With such a reputation I was curious how much proselytizing the menu would offer. 

I was pleased to discover that the Walkers’ passion for supporting sustainable seafood is firmly reflected in the choices they offer.  But they don’t stifle you with any unnecessary jargon or slogans.  Just  great, tasty offerings. Like my appetizer, the Dungeness Crab cakes served with a lime relish.  I followed that mouth pleaser with a baked gorgonzola salad, served with curried green and golden chutney.  I was torn between choosing the duck confit (with a honey reduction and braised fennel) and their Alaskan Sablefish.  I picked the later, reveling in its pepper crusted skin accompanied by a wasabi slaw and ginger vinaigrette.  (Alaskan Sablefish, according to  the Seafood Watch’s 2008 Culinary Chart of Alternatives, is the best sustainable substitute for Chilean Seabass (trade name for  Patagonian Toothfish), a species  to be avoided due to its unsafe levels of mercury.)

Expect to pay between $8 to $12  for their appetizers, with salads from $7 to $13.  Entrees (both meat and fish) average in the $22 range. Their menu changes frequently and is posted at their website.   With ample street parking in a scenic neighborhood ringed with Victorian homes and interesting shops, Passionfish is an affordable and easily accessible destination.  And for my money, a much smarter alternative than the nearby downtown Monterey restaurants that offer great views but little else in the way of healthy, complex and delicious meals.

When you go:

Passion Fish Restaurant
701 Lighthouse Ave
Pacific Grove, CA 93950
(831) 655-3311
www.passionfish.net

(Cindy Walter’s recipe for warm nicoise salad is featured in James Fraioli’s cookbook:
Ocean Friendly Cuisine: Sustainable Seafood Recipes From The World's Finest Chefs (Willow Creek Press, 2005)

Monterey Bay Aquarium
http://www.mbayaq.org/

How you can get a copy of the Seafood Watch pocket guides
http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.asp