Macgregors Seafood Notes

The frenzy is over. 4 days and close to 40,000 people passing by our booth. Not sure why macgregors would be at a show that is mainly attended by the public? Promoting our retail brand 44th St CAB Pot Roast and CAB Rasoee Curry Beef was obvious (we served it on Artisan Parmesan & Black Pepper Focaccia from Petit Four bakery). But at one point in the middle of an onslaught of hungry show goers on Friday I was sort of asking myself what macgregor's foodservice was doing there as well. But at the end of the day it was clear - we were getting people closer to their food. Most of the people out there have very little (surprisingly little) knowledge about what their food actually is and where it comes from. They read all kinds of names on menu's (sometimes several for the same thing), but truly never get a real idea about what it is, where it's from, how it's raised or caught, how it gets here and the people behind the process.
So our purpose was to add some value to the people attending the show - talk to our customer's customer's so to speak. What were we talking about...why are all Sea Scallops not created equal? What makes our Boutique In-shore Day-Boat Sea Scallops different than the market dominated "industrially" harvested scallops? What is Kona Kampachi anyways and why is it truly unique, not only from progressive ecologically sound aquaculture techniques, but also it's healthfully rich oil content making it in a culinary class by itself. Trust me, we did a lot of talking.
What made it really great was how good the food was that we were serving. We partnered up with Chef Gord Mackie from Far Niente to showcase our products, and the feedback was unanimous - we were serving some of the most memorable food at the show: Day-Boat Sea Scallop ceviche, with kaffir lime, fresh garlic, ginger & chili with coconut & avocado. Kona Kampachi ceviche with buckwheat soba noodles, soy lime vinaigrette, sisho mint & daikon. Pretty amazing. Just to add to that, we served it all on 100% compostable and Fair Trade certified dishes made from natural bark & re-constituted tree material.
We definitely felt by the end of the show that we had, at the very least, enlightened a few people and certainly entertained along the way. Hopefully there are a few more educated diners out there, asking chefs the right questions and ultimately creating a bigger demand for better products - our products. We'll never really know the ultimate impact we had, but we know we represented ourselves well in front of a large audience talking about great products and great restaurants (our customers).

One thing I've come to require when dining out is a suitable selection of raw or lightly cured fish and shellfish to start off a meal. It's light, invigorating and 100 times more romantic, or whatever you want to call it, than a salad. One thing that makes it an even better experience for me is knowing first hand where the fish came from. By where the fish came from I don't mean Joe's Fish Shop down the street, I mean physically where in the world that fish swam, especially when it's a fish like Tasmanian Ocean Trout.

Several years ago I started importing this fish into the Toronto marketplace with some skepticism. Ocean Trout is a saltwater Rainbow Trout, also known as Steelhead - and there is no shortage of Steelhead & Rainbow in this city. So why would we fly another Ocean Trout from Tasmania, quite literally the furthest you could possibly go to source fresh fish? Five years later, we're still doing it - and it's on the menu twice (!) at ONE - Mark McEwan's new restaurant in Yorkville. This is a fish that is close to my heart, so I get a sense of pride every time I see that we've had some influence on cutting edge culinary landscape of this city. A big part of my passion for what I do is challenging the old tried and true seafood business and injecting new species, with better quality, from less industrialized sources. Tasmanian Ocean Trout represents this better than any.

So when I tucked into the lightly cured Tasmanian Ocean Trout at ONE (after several top notch Oysters) I was brought back right to source & the people involved in producing this fish. Two years ago I was in Tasmania visiting Petuna, the company responsible for this fish. It was 4:30am and I was shivering on a dock getting ready to go out, by barge to harvest the Trout. We're in Southern Tasmania, in an inlet fed by the great Southern Ocean, not that far from Antarctica (yes there were Penguins). The surrounding area is a World Heritage Site, it's thoroughly rugged and mountainous and completely untouched. The ocean water is a deep dark red color - the runoff from the surrounding hills has stained it with mineral rich tannins. The cages are well out in the middle of the current heavy inlet, over extraordinarily deep sea water. What immediately strikes me is that everything is done by hand. There is no large floating feed house, firing pellets by compressed air into the cages. All the fish are hand-reared and monitored by divers. The fish are hand harvested with nets, slowly. They're not pumped into tanks. The harvests are small. By the end of day the Trout are on a ferry to Melbourne and on the red-eye to Los Angeles. They make a connection to Toronto same day and arrive in pristine, sashimi grade condition. They are stunningly beautiful Trout, and built quite differently than a typical Steelhead - a factor of the muscle conditioning from working in the strong, cold water currents of Southern Tasmania. The flesh is a well marbled, deep red color, consistently firm and extraordinarily clean tasting.

Petuna is a small family company that takes enormous pride in this 'boutique" Ocean Trout. They're like a band that cares more about the integrity in the music than selling millions of records. When I taste it at ONE, ever so lightly cured, so close to it's natural state, I wonder if the kitchen or server has any idea that I have actually harvested these fish from he cold ocean water of southern Tasmania. I also wonder if the table beside us has any inclination of the kind of special product they're eating. Probably not, other than the fact that the dish is phenomenal.

If anything else, ONE has made a great choice in menuing the Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout, amidst the plethora of choices they have. Toronto's restaurant scene is heavily scrutinized, especially when you're a prominent restaurateur like McEwan. When people review his menu and think that the Ocean Trout is just another Steelhead, it's their loss. Maybe they don't need to know the story, but what they can take away, at least, is the fact that there is someone out there making good choices about what fish to menu. At the end of the day, that's what separates the good from the great.