A number of Michelin-starred restaurants are among the UK restaurants menuing seafood from overexploited fisheries, according to a survey conducted by the authors of the “End of the Line” documentary.
More than one-quarter (28 percent) of the 25 Michelin-starred restaurants polled offered species listed as “endangered” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List, including Atlantic halibut, bluefin tuna and caviar.
And 22 of the 25 restaurants served species found on the Marine Conservation Society’s red list of species to avoid eating because they’re from overexploited fisheries, including European eel and North Sea cod.
The survey results are available on the authors’ new Web site, Fish2Fork.com. The authors include Charles Clover, a former Daily Telegraph editor whose 2004 book is the basis of “End of the Line.” The film makes its TV debut on More4 at 10 p.m. Tuesday.
Included on the Web site is a guide of restaurants to avoid because they menu fish from overexploited fisheries. The site’s “Bottom 10 Restaurants” are J. Sheekey, Nobu, Simon Radley at the Chester Grosvenor, Cocoon, One-O-One, Chamberlain’s Seafood Restaurant, Poissonnerie de L’Avenue, Fish Central, Gow’s Restaurant & Oyster Bar and Seaport Restaurant. Most are located in London.
“Some restaurants still have not grasped that sustainability is now part of the definition of good food. You don’t want to eat a wonderful meal and have nightmares about the species you have pushed a little further towards extinction,” said Clover.
“This new guide shows the wonderful work some chefs and proprietors are doing with fishermen to make sure that they source fish of the highest quality caught in the most selective ways,” he added. “It also shows the awful dark side of gastronomy, chefs who place an ephemeral taste, for which they can charge the Earth, above the survival of whole species and ecosystems.”
The site’s “Top 10 Restaurants” are Loch Fyne, Hibiscus, Geales Restaurant, The Creel, Feng Sushi, Tom Aikens, Fish!, Boxwood Café, Paternoster Chop House and Fishy Fishy. Most are located in London.
