Andy Lynes

Apologies for the gaps and missed or mis-heard words. Some of the Q&A have not recorded because the person asking the question was just too far from the recorder for their voice to be picked up, and then the speaker moved away from the recorder to answer the question. It wouldn't really have been appropriate for me to be running around the patio to make sure I picked up everything, especially as I would have got in the way of food and drink being served.

These sort of shows take a while to bed down and I think the BBC should be applauded for taking a second stab at the format. I want to see interesting and intelligent food programming on the TV and there's no reason, once the presenters settle into their roles and the programme finds its real identity, why this shouldn't grow into something that is very entertaining. If they are going to follow the Top Gear model, they should go the whole hog. Despite references to understeer and oversteer, horsepower, torque and various other technical matters that I have no understanding of, and an emphasis on cars costing between 30 and 100 grand that I have no hope of, or interest in, owning, I still enjoy the programme. Which goes to show that you can target a show at a niche market and still attract a mainstream crowd. I would aim more content at the likes of the eGullet.org membership and see who else comes along for the ride. But then I would say that wouldn't I?

Heather Deal - Suzuki Foundation "We are one of the higher profile not for profit environmental organisations here I'm sure you've heard of us, and we're doing a lot of work right now under the concept that its easy to say no, its much harder to find things to say yes to. We're starting to find things that we can say yes to and embrace. I'd very much like to congratulate C for having a programme we can embrace and whole heartedly support and Jamie for his initiative here today. We've got a programme called Sustainability Within a Generation which were working with the government to promote and it has 9 suggestions for a sustainable society including produce healthy food. So I’ll talk a little but about our food programmes. I've got three things I'll mention briefly, two of them are very good news stories and one of them is a note of precaution. In terms of aqua culture now you’ve all heard us address farmed salmon in the media and we realised we were talking a lot about the things we don’t want to see and that we should start talking about what we do want to see. We’re now working with a large coalition of conservationalists and we've come up with a plan and were working with the government to implement it. That plan is to have in place by 2010 two commercial scale closed containment fish farms. Now this means in the ocean salmon being grown in a closed container, a closed tank of some kind. And there are different types of floating concrete tanks and big sacks that sit out in the ocean. There are many technologies available to us. And so we're working with government to provide tax incentives, we have the economists working with us to establish if there is a significant market and were talking with industry. It's been very positively received and in fact we think that the US market for fresh fish is significant enough that the export market will support this. We also have a brochure called Seas of Change which has 10 recommendations for sustainable fishing practices. We're working with the Aquarium on something called Seafood Savvy. We recognise there are many different stages as was mentioned at which people make choices about seafood. There’s how you harvest it, how you wholesale it, there’s retail, there’s restaurants and there’s consumer choices. So were working with partners like the Aquarium and other partners to come up with a full chain of ownership from birth to gullet. And we're going to be producing, this has been a long time coming because we've all had to look at all the different seafood cards and all the different programmes and agree that we're using the same criteria for saying something is sustainable. We're getting there, it took a little while but we're there now and shortly we’ll be publishing what’s called Sustainable pack (?) which tries to address the entire lifecycle of products. It more intensive than those little cards, it gives a lot more information, it has technical information on the back and a 1 to 5 star system on the front. So well be launching that working with C and the Aquarium and others in the future. My third issue is sustainable shellfish. You'll be hearing from a scallop farmer in a moment, you've heard a lot about shellfish being the next sustainable seafood industry in fact helping people get jobs where logging and fishing and other industries aren’t providing the jobs they'd hoped they would or that they used to. So we set out to define best practices for shellfish aquaculture in terms of sustainability. What we found was that we couldn’t define best practice because the research simply hasn’t been done. So were working closely with several fisheries with the industry and ? University college to define what research needs to be done and help set priorities that we thing are important for the sustainability of this industry. We have concerns about 3 practices in particular: Beach culture of clams, where they lay them out on beaches and lay nets over them to prevent birds eating them. There are huge, huge areas now under nets and that and that’s one of the primary migratory bird routes for the Pacific Northwest Highway. We have concerns about this we feel it should not be encouraged. We’ve done the research to see in fact if it is a problem. If it isn’t, fill your boots. We also have concerns about some of the down line operations. The others ways that affects the scallops and oysters are grown is hanging in the deep ocean. Probably very low impact, but in some areas like Birch (?) Harbour they’re in a closed area and you put a lot of these rafts in with the oysters hanging below them and they start to decrease the natural nutrient levels within that area. We don’t if that’s a problem and we don’t know about the effects on the ? at the bottom of the ocean beneath it. Those things we are currently looking into, research hasn’t been done. They’ve done carrying capacity studies to see how many oysters they could grow, but they haven’t done the sister studies that show the impact on the other parts of the eco system. The third issue is that almost every single commercial shellfish in this province is an alien species. There’s some work into geoduck right now but all of our oysters, all of our clams, mussels and scallops are alien species, some of which have been found to be highly invasive in other countries. There are reasons for that, just as there are reasons that we grow cows instead of deer - they grow faster they grow bigger and they are cheaper to grow. But we think there is room there for leadership in trying to return this industry to growing native oysters. We have produced a guide called sustainable shellfish but because the research hasn’t been done this is largely a precautionary message at this time." Q&A Jamie Maw – Something that was of some discussion on out forums was the invasiveness of parasites in fish aquaculture industries. The report that was sponsored out of the University of Alberta but was actually a UBC (?) Professor who was one of the authors. Could you comment on the Suzuki Foundations approach to that and your opinion of the severity of the problem? Heather Deal - There are three primary reasons for promoting close containment and you’ve identified one; parasites, disease and waste, a fourth is escape of course. In terms of the parasites there’s been a lot of research done but the peer reviewed research have all said that lice are a serious, serious problem. As you know lice are found naturally on wild fish you expect them there. In fact, if you are fishing at the mouth of a river, if you can find lice on it it’s a sign that it’s a good fresh fish, it’s just come in from the ocean, because in fresh water those lice die. Unfortunately when you farm fish they never go into fresh water and the lice never die, so there’s a year round source for these parasites in a huge bag of very dense amounts of fish and we get very large amounts of lice that never go through their natural life cycle. And as a result, when young fish are coming past these farms, normally they would not be running into lice but they are because of the farms. There is just no question, there is a whole lot of data that shows that the fish that come through those areas of the farms are picking up those lice and not surviving because young fish don’t hold 7-10 lice each and survive. So in addition to pushing for the closed containment that will eliminate that problem, we also feel that sighting of existing farms is something that can be dealt with right now. And I actually wanted to mention one positive thing with closed containment – you use less food you have less chance of having to add antibiotics or sea lice killer because you’re not exposed to outside diseases. And what happens is that you get waste that is quite pure. I’m a gardener and fish compost is like gold for gardeners and I think there is a huge opportunity to use the waste on the farms as an economic driver. Jamie Maw – They’re growing Northern (?) Coho in Aggasiz British Columbia in a land-based contained environment and they’re using the waste nutrient to (?) Wasabi. Who would have thought? Heather's response to a question not picked up on the tape: There are consumer cards which we think are wonderful and we’ve worked with Monterey, the Aquarium , Sierra club does one as well, they’re all overlapping here and there . But we also think there needs to be a choice at the wholesale level as well that’s one of the largest gaps. If we get enough market pressure from this end then that’ll trickle back and they’ll stop, you know purchasing things wholesale that they can’t sell at the retail level. But we think that in the stores the restaurants at the wholesale level at the consumer level and also at the harvest level, put that market pressure in there, that market awareness filtering throughout the system, then the industry will do it for itself.

My apologies to Jason for what now reads in black and white as rather a rude question. Just in case my question is misinterpreted - it was not my intention to criticise the efforts of the Oceanwise team. Its obvious that Jason and his team have done incredibly well to get so many establishments on board in such a short period of time. I can guess that the programme represents a significant committment in time and effort from both the Aquarium and the restaurants involved, and in particular C, who are sharing their expertise with others. It's a great model and one other cities should follow. Next stop London?

Jason Boyce - Program Coordinator, Ocean Wise, Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre I've been working at the aquarium for about 4 years now on conservation programmes. When the opportunity arose 6 months ago to head up a new programme called Oceanwise I jumped at the chance. Oceanwise really came from our involvement with the Monterey Bay Aquarium with their seafood watch programme which we’ve been involved with for around four years as well. Though the years we've been working with them and our involvement here with C restaurant, the founding sponsor for Oceanwise, with the work they've done with sustainable fisheries there was a natural linkage to put together the information about sustainable fisheries and how you can find the market and suppliers for it with all of the restaurants in Vancouver as a seafood city. The Oceanwise programme is focused on giving consumers the information they need to identify restaurants that serve sustainable seafood choices and then working with those restaurants to give them the resources and information they need to find those choices. We do it on a restaurant by restaurant basis and a seafood case by case basis. We have 16 restaurants currently signed up across Vancouver and that’s just what we announced in April. C has done a lot of work with us to spread that knowledge around the community of chefs and restaurants. We focus on four aspects of sustainability: we want to make sure that the seafood that is stocked is abundant and resilient; that it's well managed; that the harvesting of the seafood has minimal impact on habitat; that there is minimal bycatch. We look at seafood on a case by case basis because it's really difficult to make generalisations about sustainability across the board, which is something I know for consumers is difficult because you'll go out there and say, "I know I want to find a sustainable seafood product that is caught this way and caught in this location but who knows the answer to that question? And who do I go to ask?", and that is the need that Oceanwise is trying to address. So you'll server will know because we'll do information sessions and training with the restaurant staff and there's an Oceanwise logo beside those options that fit that sustainable seafood mentality. (Holds up Oceanwise card) This is the rack card that has not only a list of the restaurants that are currently on board but a brief description of the programme as well and also a website to go to find out more information. It's good to come here to C restaurant today especially with all the work we've been doing together and to have a full menu that is all sustainable and that is something that we work to with each of the restaurant partners. Some restaurants will go all the way some will do as much as they can, but you'll always know what options you can buy because of that logo. So we make the option easy and its all about personal options really and personal choices. Q&A (The first question asked and Jason's reply were not audible on the recording) Question from Andy Lynes You've got 16 restaurants signed up, that quite a small proportion of the total number of restaurants in the city. Do some restaurants have objections to the scheme, or do they not understand what it is? Answer: It's not something that can happen overnight. We announced the programme here at C restaurant in January and within 2 months we had 16 restaurants on board and those were the initial adopters that jumped on real quick and then as the news gets out in the media and as we do publicity we have another 8 signed up. Everyone we talked to had no objections to wanting to do it, it's just finding the right time and taking the process slowly so that its effective and viable for restaurants. AL – So you anticipate it's just a matter of time… Jason – It's going to snowball. Q by unknown person – Who funds the project and is there a cost to each restaurants? Jason - There is no cost to the restaurants involved. We are funded by a foundation called The Packard Foundation which does a lot of funding for environmental good around the world. And they provided funding to the Oceanwise programme.

Seriously though, do you know what is at the heart of your continued obsession with restaurants and food apart from the fact that your interest developed at a young age and that your father had a significant role to play?

I wrote about my meal there in February on the Chez Panisse thread. I agree with Russ' sentiments. I went in search of the perfect green salad and found it. It's a truly great restaurant.

I was referring to the way Heston came over on the TV - boy-ish charm and enthusiasm mixed with skill and authority - and the content of the sketch - informative, straightforward and entertaining - rather than the dish itself, although I have tasted it and I think its one of the nicest things he serves at The Fat Duck.

I thought it was great. I now know from Merrilees Parker's report about Tiffin that the food in India is not only delicious but also fantastic. Its also really different from the stuff we get over here and that chicken tikka masala is not a traditional Indian dish. I liked Richard Corrigan a lot, and I'm sure he'll stop saying "basically" every other word once he calms down a bit. The snail porridge sketch was excellent but I missed Richard Johnson glugging yoghurt drinks as I had to collect my son from his swimming lesson during that bit. I could have lived without Janet Street Porter cooking chicken casserole, but hey, its not a real programme unless its got a celebrity on it is it?

Dr. John Nightingale - President, Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre "Seafood is not only a hallmark of a coastal city like Vancouver, but it’s really good for us; proteins, amino acids fatty acids. Most seafoods are great. If there was more seafood for people around the world to eat, people in general would be better off. The problem is that in the oceans of the world we have over harvested a good many of the stocks of the different species. So when you think about seafood there are species of fish – blue fin tuna is an example – there are blue fin tuna all over the world but they don’t swim from America to Samoa to Iceland, they live in different stocks. As scientists have learned more in the last few years, they are more and more concerned about these stock units or giant extended families where there is interbreeding and interaction. A paper by a Canadian scientist Ran Myers a couple of years ago set the world on its ear because it demonstrated that 90% of the animals over 6 feet long in the ocean are gone. They’ve been caught and harvested and that includes whales, big fish like the marlin and the sail fish, big sharks, they’re gone. So clearly we’re changing the balance of the ocean's eco system. That used to something that just a bunch of biologists cared about. But one of the things that we know through our work at the Vancouver Aquarium is that a lot of ordinary people care too. None of us wants to feel like we’re part of the problem we’d all like to be part of the solution. Happily there is an answer, and that is just paying a little more attention to where our seafood comes from and learning enough that we can tell with some help from organisations and maybe even the eGullet.org website, that we can begin to tell what is sustainable and what isn’t, what is a little more sustainable or a little less sustainable. So it’s not an environmental harangue, it's not a tree hugger thing at all, its just natural human inclination to want to not be part of the problem. From our point of view, restaurants like C who were a pioneer in starting a focus on sustainable seafood and actually sustainable food and practices in general, that’s terrific. So we throw out weight behind those kinds of efforts. Over the last several years, we started with Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch programme which is one of two programmes the other being the (?) Institute in the US started focusing on sustainable seafood. Well, we evolved from there and Jason will tell you about Oceanwise which is a programme for restaurants. The number is somewhere between 60 and 70% of the seafood, certainly over 50% of the seafood gets consumed in restaurants in the lower mainland. So while we all take it home and cook, a lot of people who enjoy food also enjoy eating out. There are a lot of restaurants now hopping aboard and they’re doing the new work of thinking about where does our food come from, not being dogmatic or didactic or hard nosed about it or preachy, but just trying to do a little better. Our applause goes to Robert and Carrie and the work that C has done as a pioneer, but there’s a place there for every one of us and that’s really the thrust of what the Aquarium is working on. Everybody can get involved whether it’s when were dining out or in our own kitchen. Its not hard work, what is hard is getting the information. So I think that’s why a lunch like today is great for staring to spread the focus of people thinking about it a little bit and if we can find a channel like eGullet.org that’s great as a way of disseminating some information about stocks and species or where do things stand. Often the answer is “we’re not quite sure” but at least asking the question helps and we’ll try and follow up and provide as much information as we can. From the Aquarium’s point of view, we’re delighted to be here today for us it’s a major new connection into people who enjoy food."

I'm going to start posting the speeches made at the luncheon. Please bear in mind that they are verbatim transcriptions of off-the-cuff speeches made in a relaxed, casual environment. They will not be edited in anyway due to restrictions on my time, but I think they stand by themselves and give a good flavour of the event for those not able to attend, and those that were there but couldn't hear!

I think it would be very interesting to compare this list with one published in the UK. There are some real surprises on it. I had assumed the likes of Pollock, Hake and especially Hoki to be in plentiful supply given their low price in this country. I'm in the very early stages of trying to organise a sustainability event in London which will attempt to facilitate a sharing of knowledge and expertise on the subject between Canada and the UK. I'll post more once I have made some progress in getting a chef and other experts in the UK interested. Vancouver are already on board with the idea.

Restaurant website and Square Meal guide entry.

Steven - you say you have a restaurant addiction. Do you still get high on the experience, or do you have to keep taking bigger and bigger doses just to feel straight?

I'm talking purely in terms of gender and ignoring the fact that he doesn't like beer and has a weakness for Broadway musicals.

New thread started here. Please address this issue on the new thread and not here. Thanks.

On The Restaurant thread Jamie Maw asked: "I understand why sea bass is such a popular restaurant dish--it's forgiving even in the hands of novitiates, holds well and is naturally unctuous. For these reasons it's also been a popular catering (event) entree. So my question is this: What's the level of recognition of the endangerment of this species in the UK? And, same question, regards Russian caviar, bluefin, local species etc. I've read several articles of interest in The Guardian, but are these issues on the civilian radar yet?" Is the Sea Bass served in London an endangered species? Are you aware of other endangered species and would you avoid ordering them if you saw them offered on a restaurant menu?

From the chef's own private collection I believe.

I assume you didn't see the print version of this article and its charming photo of the author holding hands with his subject, otherwise you would know that Jay is most definately a man.

Screwballs is correct - we buy them in the supermarket for the kids. (For those not in the know, its a plastic cone filled with ice cream with a ball of sugar coated bubble gum at the bottom.) How about real cider or lager and lime ice lollies?

Yes, J Sheekey offers caviar and Fishworks has sea bass on their current menu. I would say that bass is one of the most popular restaurant fish in this country. Its also on Rick Stein's current menu.

Lola's website. I wonder if you can get The Kinks' "Lola" for ice cream vans.

That sounds fantastic. I hope you are doing 99's. I'm in London next week and will make sure I stop you and buy one.

matt - thanks for the update. just to clarify, you were actually a chef at The Castle Hotel/Vanilla Room? It's not clear from your original post.

I do remember that the bargain lunch was in sharp contrast to the £75.00 a head a la carte which had a number of supplements; if I recall correctly, sea bass cost an extra £20.00 although it may have come with some caviar or something. At that time, I associated MPW's name with very good dining experiences and ate at every restaurant he was directly or indirectly involved in - The Canteen, Interlude de Chavot, Aubergine etc etc. It was only a bad experience at the Criterion and then a mediocre and very expensive meal at The Mirabelle that put me off. I haven't yet made it to Frankies or indeed eaten one of Dettori's frozen pizzas. Maybe if they rebrand them "Marco and Frankie's Pizza Pie" I might be tempted.