Macgregors Seafood Notes

BRUSSELS
The largest seafood only Exposition in the world.
Truly a remarkable week had, by both Mr. Fresh and yours truly, Mr. Fish. For those of you that have been to the Boston Show, Brussels is Boston x 3! A total of 11 halls dedicated to the world of Fish and Seafood Commerce.
The show is set up basically by Country of origin, which is very convenient. One gets to see first hand the theme and creativity of presentation by country. For us, the hands down winner, was Ireland. Lots of organics to be sure, but the crisp unique presntation of the companies represented in the Ireland section was outstanding. Felt sorry for the Vietnam section next door, as the traffic flow definitely went Irelands way.

When we returned from Boston this year in February, we returned with a clear message that sustainability had finally made its mark in the North American marketplace. Returning from Brussels, there is no doubt, sustainability has traveled a full circle and then some. Responsible fishing is fast becoming a mature subject matter in Europe. Think the Europeans have clearly identified this entire issue as paramount to not only doing business, but also for the future of fish business for ever!

The splashy marketing of sustainability at the American based show, is replaced by factual, no nonesense, informative solutions in Europe. Marketing sustainability might be in vogue in North America, but the industry clearly needs practical, long lasting solutions! The time for rhetoric is over. We all have an opportunity to do our part. Become informed, stay informed, and continue to challenge the status quo...that is the message from Brussels.

Over the course of the next months, we hope to be able to introduce some wonderful products here in Ontario. We hope to continue to find solutions. One thing is certain; we are asking a lot of new questions about origin, fishing methods, by-catch, sustainability, and yes, quality...stay tuned, we are getting excited!
Mr Fish

If you're in the food business and you really love food, you'll know that the two most abused items are surely Chicken & Scallops. Quality runs the gamut. Both are items that are habitually "pumped". What does this mean? It's a process of soaking the product in water / sodium / phosphates to add weight, change appearance or extend shelf life. In the scallop world product is differentiated by the terms "wet" and "dry" pack. But "dry-pack" doesn't always tell the whole story. Dry pack scallops, while they may not have been soaked to pick up weight, have usually been treated with a sodium based product called Purogene. Because a lot of these scallops are caught by Trip Boats, meaning they're out for 7-10 days at a time, Purogene is applied to help the scallops retain water and extend shelf life. While not necessarily picking up water, they are not not necessarily a natural product either.

So how do you get the real deal, all-natural scallop experience? The experience that, until you've had it, you never realized it could be so good? One is to find restaurants / vendors who are actually selling a Day-Boat, or Diver caught scallop. Day-Boats and Diver's literally go out and come back same day - scallops are then hand shucked, sorted and shipped same day, 100% as mother nature intended. These scallops will vary in color from orange to opaque off white. A surefire sign you've got a treated scallop is a real consistency and uniformity in color. Furthermore, the taste is pure and sweet and the texture (if cooked well) is at the same time firm and buttery smooth and delicate.

Now, to go one step beyond and have a real scallop experience, as mother nature intended, is to find roe-on scallops. On a scallop, the roe sac, or coral, is a pale to bright orange crescent moon shaped sac connected to the abductor muscle (scallop). Europeans wouldn't have it any other way, yet in North America it's discarded, which once you've tried it will agree is embarrassing.

I recently brought in Diver Caught Scottish King Scallops, roe-on (Pecten Maximus), a slightly different specie than the North American Sea Scallop. When I saw these scallops, absolutely pristine & untouched, I had to go out and have a real experience with them, beyond what I could accomplish cooking them at home. What better place to have a King scallop than at Crush Wine Bar on King st. West in Toronto. Remarkably simply prepared, pan-seared to give a nice crust on the exterior, rare throughout, perched atop a small bed of flavorful lentils. But it was the roe that made the dish. Mother nature has come up with the perfect compliment to to the dense scallop muscle! The roe, when cooked, is rich and creamy and candy sweet. It's an unbelievable combination.

Seek out seafood in it's most natural state, and you'll find it's truly rewarding. Beyond that, Diver Caught and Day-Boat caught are indicators that you're buying from small scale producers, not huge factory, industrial vessels. There is a respect for the resource and it shows right down the experience I had at Crush, which was phenomenal.

Paul

Why wait until Friday? When you get a great question, dive right in(that's fish talk!)

IS IT AS SIMPLE AS GREEN, YELLOW, RED, WHEN DECIDING ON WHICH FISH TO CHOOSE?

This question is in response to the various sustainable fish guides that are out there, outlining the best choices for seafood. Some use a colour code system with green being the best choice, red being avoid. These guides run the gamut from detailed to quite basic. There are many out there, some regional, some based on farmed fish, some wild. One of the more detailed ones is put out by Monterey Bay Aquarium. A U.S. slant, but good detailed info on the site. www.mbayaq.org. Another good one is www.mcsuk.org, which is a United Kingdom site that takes into consideration things such as exploited wild fisheries, fishing area scientific assessment, capture or fishing methods, breeding seasons to avoid, labeling to reduce confusion, amount of by-catch, sustainable fish farming including best practice guidelines, feed, stocking density, organic principles, ranching principles…etc.
Yikes! Confused yet? So how do we make this simple? Truthfully. The balance between environment and industry is usually never simple. To be sure, we all can do our part by asking the questions. Knowledge is power. Where does the fish come from? Is it in season, or out of season? Is it an exploited fishery? If so, does the fish at least come from a recognized sustainable source? If the fish is farmed, are there best practice guidelines being used? What type of fishing method is being used? Hook and line, trap, diver? All good questions, and we certainly should have the answers to make it "simpler." The more questions asked, the more empowerment both the industry of fish and the environment of fish will have.


Mr. Fish

Fish and shellfish offer the restaurant chef an opportunity for diversity, excitement and differentiation. At macgregors, this is our passion. We have positioned ourselves as the foremost progressive seafood supplier in the marketplace. We not only offer an absolutely unique and comprehensive selection of fish & shellfish from around the globe, but we also pride ourselves in being the ultimate seafood resource and promoting progressive, sustainably minded fisheries and aquaculturists.

Our passion for fish & shellfish means that we invest our resources in finding new, regional, seasonal and unique seafood from the world’s best suppliers. We’ve pioneered bringing unique chilled premium fish from Australian & New Zealand to Toronto, such as Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout, Bluenose Seabass and John Dory. We’ve introduced remarkable species from Hawaii such as Kona Kampachi, sustainably raised in the pristine waters off the Kona Coast – hatched, reared and harvested using state of the art aquaculture technology, without depleting wild fisheries or harming the ocean environment. We offer “Boutique” day-boat sea scallops from a single local boat in Boston. The scallops are wild harvested in the morning, hand shucked, sorted, packed and shipped same day. A truly unique and memorable scallop!

Salmon is a big part of our business and we have developed an unparalleled, exclusive 15 year relationship with one of the premier salmon suppliers in the world, Jail Island. Why do we believe so strongly in Jail Island? For one, Jail Island is raising indigenous Atlantic salmon in one of the most perfect areas of the world – the Bay of Fundy, fed by the cold Atlantic Ocean. They take a world leading integrated environmental, fish health and operational management approach to aquaculture. They are on the cutting edge of research and development, one of the first to develop integrated multi-trophic aquaculture where the culture of mussels and seaweeds on salmon sites are used as a way to minimize the environmental impact of the farm while producing additional high quality seafood products. You can trust you’re using the best, local Atlantic Canadian Salmon when you see the Jail Island brand.

We have a passion for seafood, and an enthusiasm to re-invent the role of the seafood supplier in Ontario. We stay on top of cutting edge seafood trends. We don’t offer “me-too” products. We offer resourcefulness, inventiveness, and originality. We aim to be a part of making your menu unique and giving your customers memorable seafood experiences.

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.

Every now and again I actually get out to eat somewhere other than my in-laws like, an actual restaurant. It's always a challenge to decide on a spot because we are seriously blessed with choice in this city, and when you only get out so often, these decisions are not taken lightly. For me, it's got to be something new & exciting with a bit of buzz and it's got to have AT LEAST 5-6 interesting fish options on the menu - and hopefully one of them is raw. Not that I'm after a sushi place per se, but some quality raw/sashimi style dishes have become my favorite way to start a meal. And by Interesting Fish Options, I mean other than Salmon, Halibut and Tuna. I do get into those fish with the best of them, but for something special I'd rather not, you know, since I make a living making interesting fish options available to chefs...



So the restaurant of choice was C5 - the brand new place in the newly designed Crystal wing of the ROM. Why? They had a raw tasting as part of their starters, an in-season Wild Black Bass, a Black Cod, a fresh Dungeness Crab, an Hokkaido Scallop and, I have to say, some pretty good looking non-fish items as well like a smoked Rib-Eye medallion. The raw tasting was terrific. It was a 5 part dish - Ahi Tuna, Hamachi, a Summer Breeze oyster, Madai Snapper and a Beef tartare. Each part was unique and exceptionally done with interesting flavor components to accompany the raw fish. Although, I hadn't heard the term Madai Snapper before. Snapper can be one of those names that gets thrown about to describe just about any red-skinned fish. A great example is West Coast Rockfish that has found tremendous success under the moniker Pacific Snapper. So it begged the question as to what this Madai Snapper is, and if it's actually a snapper at all.

As it turns out, Madai is the Japanese word for Red Snapper which similar to the Kiwi's, they use in reference to a Red Sea Bream - not a snapper at all. We sell it as the Premium NZ Snapper. In both New Zealand and Japan it is considered the king of fish. What's interesting to note is that about 10 years ago 90% of all the NZ Snapper went to Japan, met by an insatiable demand for the premium south pacific line caught fish. It wasn't until only recently that the Japanese began farm raising Snapper and virtually all NZ exports of Snapper to Japan stopped. So NZ turned a lot of it's attention to other markets such as the US and Europe for their snapper export, which is exactly why we're even getting the premium NZ Snapper these days.

What differentiates it from our domestic snapper (other than it not being a snapper at all) is simply the fact that it is from the cold South Pacific. The meat has a richer texture than the lean warm water domestic snapper and it is equally as sweet. That is what makes it such an ideal raw/sashimi item. I don't see a problem menuing the NZ Snapper as Madai Snapper because it is the same specie as the "Japanese Red Snapper" albeit from New Zealand. Even though it's not a true Snapper by DNA standards, this is what you'd get asking for Snapper in either Japan or New Zealand.

My only other comment from the night would be that Black Cod has to be one of our greatest resources. It's, in my opinion, the best fish from a culinary perspective - rich, pearly white, velvety smooth with a large flake. I've never been disappointed by it. Not only that, but Black Cod is a great "green" seafood choice. It's by far one of the world best managed fisheries and every chef and customer should feel good about a Black Cod menu option.

All in all a great night out at a restaurant offering terrific seafood options, especially raw. There should be place on every high end menu for top notch raw fish. And if you run into Madai Snapper, you'll know that it's our Premium NZ Snapper, or truthfully, a Pacific Red Sea Bream.