Choose your fish wisely

Christophe Gavois, executive chef at Sheraton Abu Dhabi, explains why he has pledged to help reduce consumption of the ever-popular, but heavily over-fished, local favourite hamour.

Are you familiar with the sordid sweetlips, pink ear emperor and the orange spotted trevally? How about the two bar seabream, black streaked monocle bream, Ehrenbergs’ snapper or the yellow bar angel fish?

Until a few months ago, these names — all of which belong to local UAE fish — were as unfamiliar to chef Christophe Gavois, executive chef at Sheraton Abu Dhabi Hotel & Resort, as they may well be to those of you reading this.

However, since then, Gavois, along with his colleagues at the four other Starwood hotels in Abu Dhabi, has pledged his support to the Emirates Wildlife Society’s (EWS) ‘Choose Wisely’ campaign.

The aim is simple — to replace overfished local species, the most well known of which are hamour and kingfish, with more sustainable options.
But, even though EWS says that more than 80% of the world’s main fish stocks are considered to be fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion, the Starwood properties are the first hotels in the UAE to commit to the cause.

So what caused Starwood to sign up and how has Gavois adapted menus to incorporate the new ingredients, identified as the seven sustainable breeds of fish to be found in the UAE?

“Starwood is very much into sustainability; it’s a big thing for us,” says Gavois.

“When we first found out about EWS, it was very exciting because I used to work in Europe, and back in England it’s a big thing — sustainability and food mileage and so on — you source local products as far as possible, which is something we were looking at, so it’s something that I as a chef and our team embraced.”

Once onboard with the EWS, the first step was to identify what fish were suitable and how to source them.

“We work very closely with our supplier based at the Mina Port and we also go regularly to the port to see the supply, what is available and the quality as well,” explains Gavois.

“There was a lot of background work with the supplier and the fishermen, as we explored what was really out there. We were very lucky — with seven different types of sustainable fish available each week we have good supply.”

Currently, Sheraton Abu Dhabi is working with The Deep Seafood Company to source the fish and Gavois says the “prices are quite low”, but that this will probably change over time as awareness increases.

With the fish readily available, Gavois said the second step was the tasting of the fish and menu creation.

“Around 90% of the fish are completely new to me. That was one of the stages — to taste the fish, to cook it in different ways and adapt recipes — that was a big job in itself,” he says.

When it comes to introducing the new fish to guests, the hotels are taking a softly-softly approach, focusing on buffet restaurants over à la carte outlets, but already they have seen some marked achievements.

Gavois says firstly, the amount of hamour and king fish available at the weekly seafood night at buffet restaurant Flavours was reduced.

Nothing is forced down the guests throat; they are invited to make the decision to support the Choose Wisely campaign for themselves.

Sustainable fish options have green labels saying “go for it”; fish stock that is exploited but within sustainable levels has an orange sign reading “good choice but there’s better”; and heavily overfished stock has a red label, warning “think again”. Simple? Yes, but so far it’s working.

“Kingfish has gone completely and as we speak, hamour has also gone completely from the deli buffet and the seafood night,” says Gavois.

“It was all about taking it one step at a time, making sure that all our staff are aware of what we are doing and can explain to the guests properly what the initiative is all about.”

“The most important thing is to reduce consumption and the biggest job I would say is to make people aware. Awareness is critical,” says Gavois.

The next step will be to extend the scheme to Sheraton’s Spanish and Mexican outlets, while Starwood’s hotels in Dubai are expected to join the campaign by mid-2011. To find out more visit www.choosewisely.ae