Living, Breathing, Eating Fish

• Bold Thinkers
• //
• Amanda Baltazar
• //
• September 2011

He’s a cook, he’s an author, and he’s a National Geographic fellow. Barton Seaver lives, breathes and eats sustainable seafood, and his goal now is to have more people doing so.

The former chef/partner of two restaurants in Washington, D.C., both of which served sustainable seafood, in May Seaver published his book, ‘For Cod and Country,’ which is filled with advice about using and eating sustainable fish, as well as many recipes.

Seaver is also a National Geographic fellow, which means he looks at how humans give and take from the world and how that affects it. In this role he works with various audiences talking about the nutritive value of seafood but also the opportunities we have as consumers to ease our burden on the oceans.

What did you learn at the two D.C. restaurants you worked at?

They showed me that people like trying new species of fish and that food can be educational.

In one restaurant we served 78 species of seafood in the first year we opened. We were very seasonal and had appropriate protein portions, 4 oz. to 5 oz., so customers came to trust us and know they were going to get an appropriately portioned meal.

We traded in the perceived value of a giant slab of filet for a real value of a fulfilling meal with nuanced flavors and connections and people walked out of our restaurants happy.

But they also knew that the fish they’d eat with us probably wasn’t going to be scallops, bass, tuna or salmon. But it was going to be blackfin tuna, bluefish, Arctic char—species that were new and we had an opportunity to introduce people to them.

• Corporate Responsibility

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