Striped Bass Glasgow
It's a brave soul who sets up a seafood restaurant these days.
Supplies are drying up because of overfishing, and sustainability is the buzzword. Previously overlooked species such as mackerel, megrim, gurnard, pollack and coley are being rediscovered as the formerly prime species like cod and tuna become more problematic.
Even so, working out what is or is not sustainable is not straightforward. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) keeps lists of species to eat and species to avoid - see www.fishonline.org - but even then the waters are cloudy. The same species can be on both lists simultaneously, depending on where it has been fished.
What's more, most of the native fisheries approved by the Marine Stewardship Council - another fishy body not to be confused with the MCS - are in waters around Cornwall and the south of England.
This is a headache for Scottish chefs, as there has been no clarity about the sustainability of Scottish-landed fish, so basically they have had to take their supplier's word for it. Happily, a round of further MSC certifications of fish from Scottish waters is in the pipeline.
With all this hassle, you have to admire restaurateurs who try to do the ethical thing. In London, chef Tom Aiken has opened Tom's Place, majoring in right-on seafood.
In Callander, Dick and Tom Lewis are trying to wean customers off the knee-jerk haddock and on to greener alternatives. In Glasgow, Ian Fleming, the former owner of the Buttery, has opened Striped Bass, its mission statement being "We use only the best Scottish and British sustainable produce." Looking at the menu, the Striped Bass is making a stab in the right direction by specifying when fish is farmed. Personally, I boycott farmed fish (although cultivated shellfish like mussels are fine) on environmental grounds.
At the Striped Bass, the farmed salmon is organic. For me, that's just a less bad type of farmed, so I still won't eat it. But at least here people know what they are getting. And there's enough on the menu that's wild, such as herring, mackerel, whitebait, langoustines and razor clams, to make it interesting.
Not everything is piscine at the Striped Bass.
There is pheasant breast on offer, a thoughtful and more adventurous alternative to the ubiquitous chicken breast. Where chicken does appear, it is free-range. We had to try the soup of the day, an ultra-seasonal cream of wild garlic made from those green ransoms that pop up in woods in springtime.
In the event it was mellow and fragrant and a generous portion, almost a meal in itself. Likewise, a starter of beautifully fresh sole goujons in chilli and parmesan crumbs, served with a vigorous home-made tartare sauce chunky with gherkin and caper, was similarly huge, and a bit of a bargain at £5.95. Thank heavens we had gone for two more starters rather than main courses.
Smoked, paprika-dusted fried whitebait, with their textbook dose of health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, sizzled and satisfied.
Oysters came in an original rendition, Irish in inspiration, served warm in the shell on a bed of champ - spring onion and potato mash - under a silky hollandaise. This dish was well-conceived, only undermined by the sauce being so eye-smartingly vinegary that it vied with every flavour on the plate.
To bulk out our double serving of starters (which was actually not necessary), we had the roasted root vegetables - a much better solution to the "what veg will we serve?" problem than all those dreary side orders of jet-lagged green beans etc. We also tried the hand-cut chips, which turned out to be properly rugged, twice-fried jobs, the sort of chip worth getting fat for.
I hope they change the dessert menu at the Striped Bass. Currently it's all US-style cheesecakes and solid pies. Why? I don't know. This is certainly not what I want after fish, or at lighter, brighter times of the year.
We dutifully sampled the New York-style baked cheesecake, which didn't taste in the least baked, and sawed our way through a solid white chocolate pecan pie. Neither struck the right note.
Poached fruits, compotes, jellies, sorbets, winey egg whips and sabayons ... these are just some of the classes of pudding that the kitchen would do well to explore.