The Feature

The new school of fish

for sanfranmag.com

Eating sustainably is at the very core of Bay Area culture, an essential part of the local ethos. Our chefs are leaders of the organic movement, and when we sit down in a top-rated restaurant, we take it for granted that the food we’re served has been sourced with the best interests of the planet at heart. We assume that the salad greens are always organic and that the porchetta sandwich we stand in line for is made with meat from a humanely raised, hormone-free pig who spent his days rooting for acorns underneath an oak tree. But when it comes to offering sustainable seafood, very few local restaurants get it right in any consistent way.

The problem isn’t a lack of interest. There is a booming demand for sustainably caught fish. You’ll find it at restaurants across the price spectrum, from Chez Panisse to (I kid you not) McDonald’s. But at the same time, many of our most famous chefs continue to put unsustainable choices like ahi tuna, monkfish, and farmed salmon on their menus, while their most respected suppliers keep selling red-listed fish to whoever wants it. Even the many chefs who go out of their way to ask the right questions of the people they get their fish from can be misled by the half-truths told all along the supply chain. In the end, despite our best intentions, much of what we’re told or assume about the provenance of the seafood we eat is essentially a fish story.