Many chefs who preside over a seafood restaurant that's literally on the Pacific Ocean would insist on buying local. But for Bernard Guillas, executive chef at the Marine Room in San Diego's affluent area of La Jolla, anything harvested from within 10 miles of the local shoreline is taboo.
"This water can be highly contaminated," he says. "We have street runoff entering the ocean, and pollution from the Tijuana River. I don't want to feed my customers lobsters that have been scavenging in polluted waters."
As much as 65 percent of the Marine Room's menu is seafood, but the majority of it is sourced from other parts of the United States and the world. There's Tasmanian steelhead, Alaska king salmon, Maine lobster, Maryland blue crab, trout from Spain and prawns from Mexico. Guillas' main criteria for all of his ingredients at the fine-dining restaurant are that they be sustainably sourced, organically raised or wild, and in season.
The 48-year-old chef was raised on the coast of Brittany, in northern France, and remembers gathering oysters, mussels and shrimp on the beach as a child, and spending time with uncles who were bakers, butchers and chefs.
To read the rest of the story, click here. Written by SeaFood Business and SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Lauren Kramer, the story ran in the July issue of SeaFood Business magazine.
