SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD
Fire's chef does his part to educate
By Bob Frost
Monterey, Calif.- Douglas Katz, one of Cleveland's best young chefs, stood in front of a huge aquarium tank on a recent Friday night, cooking little catfish sandwiches and handing them out to a delighted crowd.
"Nice," said one well-coiffed woman as she tasted a morsel and examined it appraisingly. "Very nice." She pulled a digital camera from her purse and snapped a picture of a smiling Katz. In the tank behind the chef, a gorgeous seven-gill shark swam majestically.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium, 120 miles south of San Francisco, was hosting 1,500 people at a gala food fest on this night, part of a three-day, aquarium-sponsored event called Cooking for Solutions. The event was aimed at raising awareness about the precarious state of fisheries worldwide, and about food sustainability in general.
According to many scientists, a number of marine species are threatened by overfishing. Sharks, for example, are at "historically low abundance throughout the world," reports the aquarium's Seafood Watch program (mbayaq.org). Meanwhile, catfish from U.S. fish farms are in abundant supply and are grown in an environmentally friendly way, according to the aquarium.
Katz, 37, owner/chef of Fire Food & Drink restaurant in Cleveland's Shaker Square, was invited to be one of seven "celebrity chef ambassadors" for the gala. He is among cooks who demonstrate a grasp of the hot topic of sustainability - defined by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland as meeting "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Other chefs chosen included Keith Froggett of Scaramouche Restaurant in Toronto and Charles Phan of The Slanted Door in San Francisco. Past chefs who have participated include Jacques Pepin, Alice Waters and Martin Yan.
The sustainable-seafood movement is relatively new. In 2003, for example, U.S. News & World Report ran a cover story titled "Empty Oceans: Why the World's Seafood Supply Is Disappearing."
Some scientists dispute such headlines. Wally Pereyra, who taught fisheries science at the University of Washington, and served as chairman of the National Fisheries Institute, gives a grade of B+ to the global seafood supply chain.
Yet, others are worried.
In an interview last week, Elliott Norse, a biologist and president of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue, Wash. said, "The consensus of a large segment of the scientific community is that marine species and ecosystems are in trouble from human impacts, including overfishing, nearly everywhere. In many cases, these impacts are severe. In some cases, so severe they may not be reversible for many human lifetimes."
Katz said his own knowledge of sustainability issues - for all kinds of food - has expanded enormously in the last year.
"There's a lot to learn," he said. "One key thing for Fire is making sure our servers are fully aware of these issues so that they are prepared to explain our stance to our guests."
Katz is a consultant for the bank AmTrust in the creation of a public cafe in downtown Cleveland that would pay significant attention to sustainability as its menu takes shape. According to Katz, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Bon Appetit Management Co. will run the establishment, tentatively named The Market at AmTrust, scheduled to open later this year at the corner of East Ninth Street and Chester Avenue. Bon Appetit operates more than 400 cafes nationwide, including ones for Case Western Reserve University, Google and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Frost, a free-lance journalist based in San Francisco, is writing a book about the history of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.