To say that Ned Bell is passionate about seafood is like saying Gordon Ramsay has a bit of a temper. It simply doesn’t do justice to the strength of the emotion. This is how passionate the executive chef of Vancouver’s Four Season’s Hotel YEW seafood + bar is about seafood: last year this descendant of four generations of fishermen cycled more than 5,000 miles across Canada to raise awareness for his sustainable fishing initiative, Chefs for Oceans.
“I just wanted to do something that would make a noise,” he says, “Along the way I did 24 events with the best chefs in the country. It just kept gaining momentum. The same question came up again and again: what is sustainable seafood? In some places even the chefs had never heard of the concept and had no idea where the fish they buy had come from.”
Ned also works closely with Ocean Wise. Now in its 10th year, this initiative has signed up 600 restaurant partners, with thousands of outlets across Canada, to its labelling system that tells diners and chefs which fish are sustainably caught. “It makes it easy for chefs, because Ocean Wise do the research for you: you just look for the logo.”
Canadian chefs in general, and Vancouver’s in particular, have become strong supporters of the ocean-to-plate movement and it shows in the recent flowering of world-class restaurants. Ned knows the local fishermen he buys from personally: at the docks earlier this morning he introduced me to one of his Ocean Wise-approved suppliers, Shaun Strobel of Skipper Otto. More than that, Ned still fishes himself. He leads me through the labyrinths of gleaming aluminium that are the Four Seasons’ massive kitchen system to the whopping great 8kg red spring salmon that he caught in the mighty Fraser river, and is going to cook for us today.
He demonstrates how to cut the whole fish into fillets: with a long, thin knife, you slice down into the “collar” or neck right down to the spine, then twist your knife 90 degrees and follow along the length of the spine until you can lift off the whole side. Ned’s tip is to have the head hanging over the edge of the chopping board to keep the spine straight.
Then you take a spoon and scoop up all the salmon remaining on the bone, for making tartare or a salmon burger. Next take off the skin, and then run the backside of your knife along the top of the flesh to lift up the pin bones, then you can just pluck them out with strong tweezers. The fresher the fish, says Ned, the tighter the bones, so if you find it’s an effort, that’s a good thing!
