ussmanns award winning restaurants in St Albans, Hertford and Harpenden in Hertfordshire have become the first small restaurant group outside London to serve MSC certified sustainable fish and shellfish.
One of the first MSC menus item will be pan-fried MSC cod cheeks with garlic, chilli and lime, served with a dill and tarragon mayonnaise. The cod is sourced from sustainable fisheries around the coast of Norway and the North East Atlantic.
60% of diners want restaurants to show sustainable options
Protecting the seas by eating fish might seem counterintuitive, especially when so many fisheries are being overfished. But MSC certified fish comes from a sustainable source and many of the fishing boats in the programme have made further improvements to reduce discards and look after fish stocks for future generations.
A recent UK survey showed that 60% of diners want restaurants to show they have sustainable options. By supporting MSC certified fishermen, Lussmanns’ diners are helping to protect fish stocks and ensure a healthy future for the oceans.
Andrei Lussmann, founder of Lussmanns, explained the move: “Eating fish sustainably is the only way – today and every day. We have great respect for the Marine Stewardship Council and our new partnership is an important part of our aim to make sustainable dining accessible to everyone.
“Running restaurants with an environmental bias is a modern day discipline that we ignore at our peril. The MSC’s advice and guidance will help us to continue combining an ethical and sustainable approach with a passionate commitment to providing first class food and service to every diner.”
Cod: plentiful supplies now available from healthy stocks
George Clark, Commercial Manager for the MSC said: “Sometimes making a difference is hard, but sometimes it’s a real pleasure. Eating MSC certified fish at Lussmanns is definitely the most pleasant way to help promote sustainable fishing! It’s particularly great that Lussmanns are starting their MSC certified menu with cod, a fish that a lot of people think they have to avoid and yet there are now plentiful supplies available from healthy stocks in the northern Atlantic fisheries.”
Lussmanns’ supplier gains MSC Chain Of Custody Certification
The Stickleback Seafood Companyis fresh and frozen seafood suppliers, based in Welham Green in Herts. With the MSC chain of custody certification they are able to supply MSC certified sustainable seafood to Lussmanns restaurants, allowing them to show their commitment to sustainable sourcing by using the blue ecolabel on their menus.Pierre Cowlard, General Manager at Stickleback:
“At The Stickleback Fish Company we are aware of the growing interest the public has for the sustainability of fish stocks so it was a natural part of our progression that we would seek the MSC chain of custody certification. Having now secured that approval we are starting the process of expanding our MSC approved product lines to meet demand.
“One of our local customers, Lussmann’s who have restaurants in St Albans, Harpenden and Hertford, were particularly keen to develop an exclusively MSC menu so we worked closely with them to ensure that we are able to identify and source products from sustainable fisheries.”
About Lussmanns Fish & Grill Restaurants
- Lussmanns is the locals’ fish & grill restaurant, championing the best welfare-driven British producers, and dedicated to looking after all the family.
- Giles Coren, food critic for The Times, described Lussmanns as ‘everything a modern local restaurant should be’ and rated them 8/10.
- Lussmans has been recommended by The Good Food Guide since 2010.
- Lussmans are founder members of the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA), SRA Three Star Sustainability Champions and won UK Sustainable Small Restaurant Group of the Year at the SRA Awards 2014.
- They are rated as one of the UK’s top restaurants by Fish2Fork, the campaigning restaurant guide for people who want to eat fish – sustainably.
- In 2011 and 2012, Lussmans won the Independent Restaurant category of the RSPCA Good Business Awards.
- The restaurants are in St Albans, Hertford and Harpenden, Hertfordshire.
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Lussmanns St Albans: Waxhouse Gate, St Albans, Herts, AL3 4EW
Lussmanns Hertford: 42 Fore Street, Hertford, Herts, SG14 1BY
Lussmanns Harpenden: 20a Leyton Road, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 2HU
About the MSC
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organisation set up to help transform the seafood market to a sustainable basis. The MSC runs the only certification and ecolabelling program for wild-capture fisheries consistent with the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation Guidelines for the Ecolabelling of Fish and Fishery Products from Marine Capture Fisheries. These guidelines are based upon the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing and require that credible fishery certification and ecolabelling schemes include:
In total, over 340 fisheries are engaged in the MSC program with 240 certified and 100 under full assessment. Together, fisheries already certified or in full assessment record annual catches of close to ten million metric tonnes of seafood. This represents over eleven per cent of the annual global harvest of wild capture fisheries. Certified fisheries currently land over seven million metric tonnes of seafood annually – close to eight per cent of the total harvest from wild capture fisheries. Worldwide, more than 25,000 seafood products, which can be traced back to the certified sustainable fisheries, bear the blue MSC ecolabel.
For more information about MSC click here