Throughout most of his career Fork’s Chef Terence Feury has always tried to be conscientious about what he serves and how his menus might affect the well being of seafood populations. Years ago when he was cutting his teeth at Le Bernadin, they stopped serving swordfish when it became endangered, and later at Striped Bass, Chilean sea bass was removed from the menu when schools of the fish were beginning to disappear. This summer’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico Feury found deeply disconcerting. So much so, that he recently decided that he would only serve local and sustainable seafood at Fork. “I kind of feel like we really don’t have much of choice in the matter at this point,” Feury told Grub Street. “If I want to continue to cook and serve seafood for the rest of my career, I have to make this switch.”
In honor of this commitment, Feury is hosting a sustainable seafood dinner at Fork on Wednesday, September 29, with New York Times writer Paul Greenberg, who recently authored the book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, and Top Chef contender Jennifer Carroll. Proceeds from the dinner will benefit Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, the world’s leader in conservation research whose list of over-fished versus sustainable seafood choices is widely considered the industry standard, and The Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, NJ, a local organization dedicated to fostering a lifelong understanding and stewardship of the coastal environment.
The dinner, which costs $75 per person, will feature sardine escabeche, with baby cilantro, kona kampachi crudo, with sorrel moussseline and lemon oil, herb ravioli, with poached fire river oysters, fines herbes and oyster jus, and crispy skin arctic char, locally foraged mushroom ragout and chive coulis.
