Being a metropolitan city with a sushi restaurant on nearly every street corner, why is Vancouver not full of greener sushi restaurants? Last week, the news about a Seattle sushi restaurant going fully sustainable started a buzz in Twitterland and in blog space. Mashiko has a wonderful looking menu and if they’re doing their bit for the ocean, I would not hesitate to choose this place when I’m next in Seattle. But I have to ask why the sustainable sushi restaurant is not the norm?
What am I REALLY eating?
First, see what’s good and what’s bad. A guide or suggestion list of sustainable seafood is a useful tool to take to the restaurant. In Canada, the Sea Choice Guide is an excellent source of information. In the US, the Monterey Bay aquarium has a well-established Seafood Watch guide. For the UK, there is the Marine Conservation Society information. For Continental Europe WWF has a listing of guides.
Is a tuna a tuna? The confusing issue of labelling
It’s not only the species and types of fish we have to watch but there is a big problem around labelling. According to Ocean Wise, Canada has a rather weak seafood labelling law. A name such as “snapper” is utterly useless as it covers thousands of different types of fish (some may be perfectly good to eat while others may be endangered). The Bluefin Tuna, a species in the news recently, is just one of many types of tuna. When a diner orders “toro” at the sushi restaurant, s/he doesn’t know if it contains Bluefin or another type of tuna. The David Suzuki Foundation is spearheading a campaign to change the law.
Time and again, the customer is always right
The movement is consumer-driven. The Ocean Wise programme by the Vancouver Aquarium is an example of a marine conservation organisation working with restaurants to promote sustainable fish. The programme helps restaurants in making sustainable options available to their clientele. Approved items will have the Ocean Wise logo displayed on the menu and this allows clientele to easily identify the most sustainable options.
Customers/diners enquiring what they’re eating leads to restaurants demanding sustainable fish from their suppliers. This in turn leads to suppliers changing their stock priorities. Diners see positive choices, avoid the non-approved ones and the restaurants don’t find it worth their while to have the unsustainable options. This alters their purchasing choices from their suppliers.
More positive choices please
So what about the lower-end places (the takeaways, eat-all-you-cans and the everyday hole-in-the-wall operations)? Ocean Wise is anticipating a first big mid-cost sushi restaurant on the major massive sushi hub of Robson Street to get on board. Although the programme started with the more high-end restaurants, there is greater demand by the wider sushi-eating public and surely, the restaurants must be taking note.
Below is a video of a demonstration by a famous Japanese sushi chef, very much a fixture here in Vancouver. Chef Tojo shows how to make a sushi that looks mouthwatering but the concept is simple – using fresh, local and sustainable fish.
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