Sea change: UK chefs on Britain’s evolving relationship with seafood

Despite living on an island, many UK diners continue to have a complex relationship with seafood.

This can take the form of being reluctant to handle or cook with it themselves at home, to avoiding it on a menu completely when going out, sticking to well-known species, or not wanting to pay the price the top-quality produce costs.

But many factors have seen the type of seafood dishes appearing regularly on UK menus evolve over the past two decades.

Those factors include the influence of Asian or Mediterranean style cooking techniques, to global warming seeing seas around the UK heat up, attracting an influx of octopus to these shores in recent months.

We spoke with some of the country’s most in-the-know chefs when it comes to seafood cookery, including Roy Brett and Mitch Tonks, to see how they feel menus and diner demands have evolved.

The pioneers who made seafood mainstream

Scottish chef Roy Brett ran renowned seafood restaurant Ondine in Edinburgh for well over a decade, before it closed at the start of this year, with a search for a new site ongoing. He is currently working at Ondine Oyster Bar & Grill at Seaton House in St Andrews.

“I think it was Rick Stein that said it's not simple cooking, it's respectful cooking, and it's something I’ve always kept,” started Roy.

“Working with Mark Hix as well, he is just such an intelligent chef. When you look back now and you look at the books that Mark wrote all these years ago about seasonal produce etcetera, it's like the modern-day Elizabeth David!

“He's just such an inspiration.

“Then you’ve got the Mitch Tonks’ of this world, who is just a fabulous guy and a fabulous cook, Henry Harris as well. These guys just totally inspired me by their approach.

“It's just a pure love and a joy for food.

“When you go and eat Henry’s food, or Simon Hopkinson’s food, it’s just really respectful cooking. I love it.”

These chefs helped a generational change, with seafood cookery moving from being a coastal niche, to a national conversation.

Roy added: “Thanks to people like Mitch, Mark, Henry and all these guys, there’s a whole group of young talent that’s growing up underneath, that are just really respectful towards their produce.

“I remember going down to BRAT (by chef Tomos Parry) and it was just a joy to eat. Ross Geach, who used to work with Rick Stein, has just got the Padstow Kitchen Garden. We went to a lobster day there and it was absolutely incredible. It was a joy.

“These guys like Rick, they'll always keep moving and keep breathing because there's always people like that who are trained under them or me. They are doing it even better now.

“There's a lot of really, really bright chefs that are cooking seafood now. Nathan Outlaw being one of the best examples. An outstanding chef.”

Diners’ evolving tastes

Mitch Tonks founded the Rockfish restaurant group in 2009 and has decades of experience and knowledge when it comes to what is available in the UK waters.

Asked how much the landscape has changed in terms of diner habits, Mitch explained: “It’s definitely a lot of different than it was 20 years ago, for sure.

“There have been a lot of chefs that have spearheaded the seafood revolution, as it were, shared their knowledge and enthused people to do it.

“You can eat seafood very well in restaurants. The supply of fresh fish is difficult to the supermarkets and that's why our online business is going very well.

“But I think people have become more familiar with the gurnards of the world, scallops, cuttlefish. You see people eating crab and shellfish a lot more in restaurants. And as the restaurant scene has exploded, the chefs put it on the menu.

“But the big challenge, I think, for chefs now is that British seafood is some of the best in the world, and it's very expensive. When you go to a restaurant now, it's quite normal to see a plate of fish for 30 quid, or in some places £50 for turbot and those kind of things.

“Consumers have to adjust and it's difficult for chefs because it's such a highly perishable product to put on.

“And there is no cheap fish. There is no chicken liver of fish, I always say that to my chefs.

“We don't have a pasta. It's very hard to find anything that is particularly cheap.”

James Golding, formerly of The PIG and now working as chef director at Rockwater, who have seafood restaurants on the beaches of Brighton and Poole, added: “I think the whole idea of what people want has changed.

“We're quite lucky in this country now that you can literally look at any sort of style of food or any kind of level of food that you want and make a decision to go there or not.

“We have to look at the way that people can use us as a place to come and eat fish if they don't want to cook it at home.

“People don't tend to cook it much at home anymore because of the smell or the fuss.”

Roy also mentioned the different types of cooking styles which are affecting demands.

“There was this massive pull towards the Basque Country and St Sebastian approach to the grills and working with the whole Dover soles and whole turbots, the whole fish being cooked over embers,” he said.

“It’s such a beautiful way to cook. So I think in some ways things have gone even more primal, but far more seasonal. There’s a ‘less is more’ on menus now.”

The sustainability challenge and future of seafood in Britain

As a former fishmonger, Mitch champions the whole process of sustainable seafood practices, from catch to plate.

“I think one of the things that we should see more on menus is mussels,” he said.

“For me, they’re a super food in terms of their taste, their versatility, their sustainability.

“Mussels grown in the wild are part of the solution and I think in the future we'll start seeing a lot more naturally grown shellfish on menus like that.

“Fish farming has its huge problems, but mussels just grow in their natural environment, which I think wonderful.”

Isaac McHale also spent time working in a fishmonger’s growing up and now runs two-Michelin-starred The Clove Club.

Speaking about British tuna, he said: “I think 90% of all species are at danger of being overfished.

“I don't know what the answer is there. To eat less? Certainly not to eat more farmed things, if the farmed things are damaging the wild.

“Bluefin tuna has always had a bad reputation in the past 10, 20 years, with Japan's insatiable appetite for wild tuna. And the fishery was closed in the North Atlantic.

“After years of back and forth, the UK decided to start a small fishery two years ago. Suddenly we were getting wild Scottish caught and Cornish/Devon caught amazing bluefin tuna.

“One percent of all tuna species worldwide is bluefin. So the king of tuna, amazing and delicious.

“We need to very carefully manage this fishery to make sure that it's something we can enjoy in the future, not go crazy and overfish it.”

Jack Applebee is CEO of Applebee’s in London’s Borough Market, having spent his youth helping out on the family business fish stall.

“There's been huge progress,” he said, discussing sustainability practices in the industry.

“For us, a lot of it used to be about just buying highest quality at the best price. We still look for that, but now we want to do it in a way that is sustainable. It's about having a more diverse selection of species that you choose from.

“Previously I think they used to call it the 'Big Five' and it was your salmon, sea bass, tuna, cod and haddock. All these things that people were constantly eating and ordering and they know what it is.

“Whiting is a really good fish, which we have in abundance in this country, we just need to be a bit smart with it.

“One of the practises we put in place now is we follow the Good Cornish Seafood Guide. It shows you what you should be eating at what times of the year when fish are in spawning season.”

He added: “I think it's down to restaurants and chefs on how you can present these lesser known species. Something like gurnard, which is often a byproduct, is a really good thing for us to be eating in this country.

“It's a bit more hassle for the fishmongers. They're quite fiddly fish. But texture wise, it is a bit like monkfish.

“Most people will say monkfish is a premium fish, people love it, but we can get gurnard for a fraction of the price.

“It's down to how it can be presented on a menu by the chef to really get people to engage in it and how we can actually further educate our guests and the British public on seafood and the importance of having a diverse selection.”