Seaside food

'It's a way of thinking. We source our food locally, use only really good stuff and ensure nothing is wasted.' -- Barny Haughton, Bordeaux Quay, Bristol

'Food is a class issue. There's no reason why people with less money should have to eat rubbish.' -- Barny Haughton, Bordeaux Quay, Bristol

Seaside food in Britain is terrible. One only has to walk along the seafront at Brighton to see how bad it is. Fish n chips, burgers and chips, all summed up by one word, yuk. The smell on a hot summer's day is terrible. It does not have to be, and there are exceptions in Brighton, if one cares to walk up from the seafront.

Seaside food does not have to be bad. If one were to walk into a seafront establishment in a small seaside town on the continent, you would not expect to find bad food, unless of course it was catering for British tourists.

That was the thought of the Venus Company, which run a chain of fast food outlets in in Devon and Cornwall. Seaside food does not have to be bad. The Venus Company was set up with the intention of serving good food. But good food is not just the kitchen, it is the sourcing of food. The Venus Company works with local suppliers.

This may be possible on the coast in Devon, with a hinterland of excellent farms, but what if you are located in the heart of a busy, metropolitan city?

Leon, located in Spitalfields Market and a few other locations in London, has shown that even in London, it is possible. Leon made the decision that wherever possible, food would be sourced locally, meaning English, and that wherever possible, seasonal.

Quality food means more than picking up the phone and ordering free range, it means visiting the farm, seeing the conditions the animals are kept in.

Lloyd Maunder supplies free range chickens. When Shelia Dillon visited Lloyd Maunder for the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, what struck her was the lack of the vile smell of ammonia, so prevalent in factory farm sheds where chickens are packed in by their thousands, if not tens of thousands.

There are restaurants that are proud of the source of their free range chickens, they name the source of their chickens on their menus. How many restaurants do this? If they did, would they be honest enough to say it came frozen from Thailand or Brazil, supplied by the white chiller vans seen outside restaurants in the mornings?

In Lincoln, they destroyed most of the old buildings around the Brayford Pool, in Medieval times one of the most important ports in England. In Bristol they decided to revamp their old harbour area.

One of these revamped buildings houses a restaurant, Bordeaux Quay.

Bordeaux Quay takes food seriously. Not only does it serve fine food from locally sourced organic ingredients, but it does outreach work for the local community. As Paul Kingsnorth says writing in The Ecologist: '... it's not just a restaurant: it's a mission.'

As can be seen, fast food does not have to be junk food, unless your name happens to be McDonald's.

McDonald's has launched a website where you can air your views. An activist's wet dream.

 http://www.makeupyourownmind.co.uk/

McDonald's does though have its fans. It was not so long ago that Gerald Howarth MP, Member for Aldershot, was pictured promoting his local McDonald's. An image that has returned to haunt him now we are in the May local elections.

References and further reading

Joanna Blythman, Bad Food Britain, Fourth Estate, 2006
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/

Paul Kingsnorth, Barny Haughton: Local Hero, The Ecologist, April 2007

McDonalds welcome your attention.... , Indymedia UK, 7 April 2007
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/04/367306.html

Keith Parkins, MP promotes junk food, Indymedia UK, 17 January 2007
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/01/360187.html

Keith Parkins, MP yet again pictured promoting McDonald's, Indymedia UK, 19 January 2007
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/01/360389.html?c=on

Keith Parkins, Big problem with our MP's Big Mac, letters, Surrey-Hants Star, 25 January 2007

Keith Parkins, So, does our MP provide us with a junk service?, letters, Aldershot News, 26 January 2007

Keith Parkins, Do we need industrial agriculture?, Indymedia UK, 19 February 2007
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362714.html?c=on

Keith Parkins, Celtic invites its young supporters to experience fine dining, Indymedia UK, 26 February 2007
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/363557.html?c=on

Keith Parkins, Brighton, www.heureka.clara.net, April 2007
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/sussex/brighton.htm

Keith Parkins, Bad Food Britain, to be published
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/