Starfish restaurant is serving rare species of abalone
Toronto restaurateur and champion oyster shucker Patrick McMurray has tracked down a sustainable source of extremely rare pintos, Canada’s only naturally occurring abalone species, for his Adelaide Street seafood restaurant Starfish.
The large sea snails are prized for their luscious meat but cannot be legally caught or served in Canada unless grown on a farm, so McMurray tracked down the six-person-run, British Columbia–based Bamfield Huu-ay-aht Community Abalone Project, which aims to replenish wild stock of the mollusc and get it off the Canadian government’s threatened species list. Starfish is the second restaurant in the country to serve Huu-ay-aht’s abalone (C Restaurant in Vancouver was the first).
McMurray believes the majority of restaurateurs serving abalone don’t know where it comes from or how it was harvested. “We need to know where it comes from so that we can know it comes from a sustainable and ocean-friendly source,” he says.
The pintos are shipped live to Starfish, where they are served raw, in the half-shell, for $15 a pop. McMurray plans to order them as the season permits and expects another shipment by the end of January.
Sustianable? How is something RARE going to be sustainable over time? Especially if it’s on an endangered list and being sold wholesale? That’s absolutely absurd! Also, how environmentally conscious is the restaurant (or the supplier for that matter) if their shipping the stuff clear across the country? Beyond that, Toronto Life is supporting all of this with marketing style journalism. I’m appalled.
I think you may have taken that left too sharply, Sharpleft. Get checked for political whiplash.
Perhaps you should have read the post before commenting. By encouraging the breeding of these snails, it ensures that they become LESS RARE. The math is pretty simple. Your knee-jerk reaction is what is exactly the sort thing that ensures polarized opinions can never find middle ground on political issues and, thus, the status quo remains. This is particularly true of environmental issues.
I don’t think I’ve gone too far at all and not only did I read the article, I read the info on the project link. I completely support efforts to rebuild stocks of any threatened species, provided it’s being done for the benefit of ecology. Simply slapping a sustainable label on something masks the ignorance of most people and perpertuates indulgence in a rare species – it’s like saying tiger fur is ok as long as it’s farmed. The focus should be on rebuilding the species before selling it to restaurants – commercial demand is what depleted the species in the first place. I’m sure most would be surprised to know that the wild Pinto stocks are down to less than 5% than when commercial fishing began. Also, poaching is such a huge problem because of black market demand, that it will be extremely difficult (if not unlikely) to get stocks back up to where they should be. Ultimately, thinking that eating this stuff is ok because it’s grown, is a little premature. Plus shipping this cultivated rare item across the continent is counter intuitive to sustaining our environment. I’m all for middle ground, but I’m affraid ignorance is more the status quo when it comes to the environment. Want to eat sustainably? Follow a 100 mile diet.
The Abalone have landed. today, Jan, 28th