WEST NEWTON, Mass., — October 1, 2013 — Alewives and the other unconventional seafood on the Lumiere menu are part of an “Eating With the Ecosystem” program from Rhode Island, aimed at educating diners about preserving marine ecosystems. Lumiere is among five local restaurants celebrating seafood from the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Southern New England waters. Leviton’s menu will also include sake-poached monkfish liver and white hake.
Michael Leviton arranges fillets of golden alewives over a scoop of ramp remoulade, then drizzles ramp vinaigrette along the plate’s edge at Lumiere, his upscale restaurant recently ranked fifth for top food by Zagat Boston. The humble alewife, a fish so pedestrian it is used as lobster bait, has been elevated. It will be featured next week at a $60 per person dinner.
Until the turn of the last century, alewives were a diet staple in many coastal communities, and a measure of the ecological health of waterways. Today, alewives can be commercially fished only along the Eastern Seaboard in Maine.
Sarah Schumann, a fisherman and environmentalist from Warren, R.I., created “Eating With the Ecosystem” last year as a way to unite chefs, diners, fishermen, and scientists in nurturing biodiversity in marine waterways. Schumann says consumers can help this effort by “embracing what the ocean has to offer” and not just buying cod, flounder, and tuna. “The way ‘sustainable seafood’ is usually used, to refer to specific products, ignores the broader context affecting the ability of marine ecosystems to regenerate edible fish products for human consumption,” writes Schumann, who holds degrees in marine affairs and environmental policy, in an e-mail. That context, she says, includes the impact of climate change, pollution, coastal habitat degradation, and the need to make fishing viable for small-scale fishermen.
Read the full story at The Boston Globe