Our approach to sustainability

Since the 1950’s the routes to market for fishermen in the UK have become extremely complex, involving giant articulated lorry-loads of frozen Scottish seafood delivered nightly to the coast for export to Southern Europe, and whole-fleet landings on the East coast being shipped directly to Holland. Some of it will return a few days later, maybe pickled, smoked or frozen, or destined for the supermarket shelves, gutted and filleted (some of it having been as far as Thailand for processing). Currently about 80% of all fish and shellfish landed in the UK is exported and we also then import about 80% of what we consume. That Scottish Langoustines sell in a Spanish supermarket for half the price of those in an English fishmonger is in equal parts humourous and frustrating. These historic and powerful market forces can sound counter-intuitive, but are nonetheless hard to combat, let alone correct.

At Parsons we try to work almost entirely against the flow of these long established trade routes by working directly with day boats all over the UK, primarily in Devon and Cornwall as well as Western Scotland and Suffolk. As a result we cannot be sure exactly what fish, or how much, will arrive at the restaurant but we can be certain that we will have some of the freshest and best quality fish in the city, and that the fishermen who caught it will get a larger share of the sale price than others who choose to go through intermediaries and exporters (who sometimes don’t pay the fishermen for 60 days). Another factor is the sustainability of the fish we serve. Working directly with fishermen who sell what they catch - even the unloved, abundant species like Huss, Dab or Ling (in our Fish Pie)- means that more popular fish can thrive in our waters rather than their stocks collapse.

Here we receive 2 deliveries a day. The first is delivered in the dead of night by a driver coming up from Cornwall with a set of keys to the restaurant. Our chefs arrive at work and find fish that was landed the previous evening in their fridges and get to work preparing for lunch. The second delivery arrives at 4 that afternoon by bicycle from Paddington Station, fresh off the Penzance train after the fish has been landed that same morning.

This isn’t a perfect a system - price variation is a factor, as is quantity available, and weather conditions hundreds of miles away have a big effect on what our little restaurant can provide. This is especially true of shellfish, as the ability to dive for scallops, say, is severely limited in the poor weather off the Cornish coast.

This is why you will find a list of more permanent items on the menu, as well as a daily changing selection of fish and shellfish on the front of this paper. We hope you enjoy Parsons. We also hope you’ll enjoy eating fish that is sustainable, traceable and fresh.

Thanks for reading this far and we hope your dining partner isn’t too far away now...