24-03-2015
A souvenir photo with the chefs participating in the conference presenting Oceana’s project. They met on the most beautiful beach in San Sebastian on the morning of 17th March. Left to right: Ashley Palmer-Watts, José Luis Gonzàlez, Normand Laprise, Rodolfo Guzmàn, Joan Roca, Elena Arzak, Joachim Wissler, Ferran Adrià, Gaston Acurio, Grant Achatz, Heinz Reitbauer, Brett Graham, Daniel Humm, Massimo Bottura, Enrique Olvera, Pedro Subijana, Andoni Luiz Aduriz and Alex Atala
The idea is one that makes you jump from back to feet, Save the Oceans: feed the world in the words of Oceana, the foundation in Washington promoting it. Oceana, 2001, with Andrew Sharpless at its head since 2003 – in the spring of 2013 he was the author of The perfect protein, a book that is now once again in the limelight thanks to the event launched in mid-March in San Sebastian, Spain.
An info that is hardly negligible: Oceana is the largest organisation for the safeguard of the sea, it controls as many as 1.2 millions of square miles of waters between the Americas and Europe, a geographic info that denounces the troubled frontlines between Africa and Asia, as it was easy to notice during the conference. At the Basque Culinary Centre in San Sebastian, Sharpless inaugurated the involvement of some twenty super chefs in a project that was launched, from a scientific point of view, two years ago and which now begins a phase that most people defined as cool, because trendy chefs are involved, those who, with their choices, can influence taste.
It won’t be easy to convince the millions of people scattered around the planet that eating anchovies, herrings and mackerel is not only good and nice, but also fascinating and trendy. As the managers of Oceana stressed, however, the issue is about repositioning blue tailed fish from fish used as animal feed to fish for people, from fat and smelly fish to delicious fish, and, finally, from fish for the poor to a food that everyone loves to eat
Which, fish though? Blue tailed fish, anchovies, herrings and mackerels, already massively caught, but in mostly to feed salmons, pigs and chicken. The question is shifting the attention of consumers from large, convenient and noble fish, to small, inconvenient and poor fish. And to those who, like me, know that in Italy people have been saying that for decades, and thus tends to be sceptical, another representative of Oceana, Swedish Lasse Gustavsson, recalls how “yesterday you were eating sushi in Japan, today there’s a sushi-bar even round the corner where I live, in Sweden”.
The party is over, friends are leaving... Wearing a light-blue apron, in the first row, left to right, Alex Atala, Massimo Bottura, Joachim Wissler and Heinz Reitbauer; behind, Enrique Olvera and Daniel Humm
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born in Milan in March 1955, at Il Giornale for 31 years dividing himself between sports and food, since 2004 he's the creator and curator of Identità Golose. blog www.paolomarchi.it instagram instagram.com/oloapmarchi