July 8, 2015 — “I can’t think of a chef who would say, ‘I want to rape and pillage the ocean’,” says Blue Hill‘s Dan Barber. “And, along the same lines, I can’t think of a chef who isn’t actively thinking about fish in different ways.” Barber has a point: A number of big-name New York chefs are breaking down the complicated issue and trying to serve seafood with a big focus on responsibility. Tom Colicchio has pledged not to serve striped bass. Michael Chernow based his new restaurant on undervalued species like porgy and monkfish. April Bloomfield is championing bluefish and other underappreciated species. In the same way that local, seasonal vegetables and grass-fed beef first entered the consciousness of chefs — and then, eventually, the American public — the issue of local, sustainable fish is gaining traction in New York.
At the center of this seafood renaissance is Dock to Dish, a three-year-old initiative that gives a small group of 14 New York chefs direct access to fresh, wild seafood from Montauk. Members includes Mario Batali, Michael Anthony, Andrew Carmellini, Google’s Michael Wurster, and Barber himself. At the moment, it’s not as easy as simply signing up. The program has become so popular that there are now 45 restaurants on the waiting list and joining the group means a chef needs to be recommended by a peer, and then invited by founder Sean Barrett, a former fisherman. “I call it the ‘Barber Effect,'” Barrett says, referring to the chef’s uncanny ability to make other chefs care about the issues he thinks are important. “But the chefs are all about it — there’s a huge demand for transparency.”
The idea behind Dock to Dish’s strategy isn’t only about giving big-name chefs access to high-quality seafood. What Barrett’s doing is reversing the traditional order of supply and demand: Instead of chefs placing orders for sea bass or tuna or cod, small-scale fisherman catch whatever they think is best for the environment (and in the best condition to serve at restaurants). Then, each Wednesday, Barrett delivers a grab bag of fish (just like a CSA) to the chefs — less than 24 hours after the boats dock. For the service, he charges restaurants $3,000 per month for a minimum of 300 pounds of fish. Chefs don’t know what they’re getting until the day before the fish arrives, but Barrett’s system manages to cut out middlemen and get seafood that’s as fresh as possible. “In America, there’s an industrialized method of the chefs telling the fishermen what they want, which is backwards, in my humble opinion,” he says.
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