In the early 1970s, American culinary icon and TV personality Julia Child popularized monkfish practically overnight when she prepared the ugly yet delectable species on “The French Chef.” As the story goes, one day Boston fishmonger Roger Berkowitz encountered a tote of fish labeled “monkey tails.” So he bought it and displayed it in his store, and in walks Child, who pounced on the opportunity to feature “lotte” — the French name for monkfish — on an upcoming episode.
Drawing a chuckle from the audience, Berkowitz, now CEO and president of Legal Sea Foods, recalled the tale at a dinner he hosted and I attended earlier this year. The dinner’s intention was to raise awareness of underappreciated — and often misunderstood — species. And that’s no small feat.
Monkfish’s sudden rise from obscurity to fame in the early ‘70s is a testament to the influence of celebrity chefs. But a lot has changed in the past 30 years. Celebrity chefs are no longer a novelty; they’re the norm. TV cooking shows are no longer a treat; they’re on 24/7.
These days, for a celebrity chef to be heard and bring about change, he or she has to speak loudly. Very loudly. Say what you will about celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight campaign to bring an end to the wasteful practice of discarding fish at sea, which featured a three-episode TV series that aired on Britain’s Channel 4 earlier this year, but he’s making a difference, raising awareness of underappreciated species like pouting and mackerel.
Sales of pouting, for example, are soaring at Tesco, which put the cod-like fish caught off of southwest England on special in 400 of its stores after the Fish Fight series ran. Only six weeks later, the retailer’s pouting sales represented 50 percent its cod sales, and that’s impressive given cod’s overwhelming popularity in Britain. Young’s Seafood also embraced the Fish Fight series, adding mackerel to its Chip Shop line of frozen fish fillets.
So who’s the United States’ answer to Britain’s Fearnley-Whittingstall? Who will do for, say, black cod what Julia Child did for monkfish, or what Fearnley-Whittingstall is doing for mackerel?
There are only a handful of celebrity chefs who possess the star power to influence consumers’ seafood purchases, and it will take a lot more than a mention on a cooking show to thrust an underappreciated species into the limelight.
But the opportunity is there. The majority of U.S. fisheries are sustainably managed — only 15 percent of the 251 fish stocks reviewed by U.S. scientists in 2009 were subject to overfishing — a fact unbeknownst to the majority of Americans. Now it’s up to a celebrity chef to take the ball and run with it.
