Everywhere you turn these days, people are talking about food — and not just which celebrity chef is reducing what. There’s an encouraging trend among consumers to know how their food has been raised and where it comes from, reflected in a spate of recent nosh-conscious books that range from treatises on the benefits of eating locally — Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s enormously successful The Hundred Mile Diet — to tomes on ethically responsible eating, such as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and its recent follow-up, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

While organic meat and produce are regulars on many conscious shoppers’ grocery lists, when it comes to seafood, in Canada we remain somewhat in the dark. Ours isn’t a culture, like many European, Asian and African societies, that prizes fish cookery. While we’re quick to scarf back popcorn shrimp at Red Lobster or sashimi platters on the Bloor sushi strip, home preparation remains an especially alien — perhaps even daunting — prospect. The average Canadian might have vague notions that farmed salmon are “bad,” that Chilean sea bass are endangered and that dolphin-friendly canned tuna is the most ecologically sound choice, but beyond these popular taboos, we’re generally clueless.

This is a shame, because fish offer countless culinary opportunities, and according to advocates like Montreal-based writer and seafood enthusiast Taras Grescoe, their high Omega-3 content — particularly smaller, vegetarian species at the tail-end of the oceanic food chain — can even make you smarter. Citing recent research into the diets of our shore-dwelling homo sapiens ancestors, whose brains grew at a rate far exceeding the inland Neanderthal, Grescoe claims, “Eating fish actually fits in with our evolutionary background.”

The author’s latest book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (to be launched in Toronto at a This Is Not a Reading Series event at the Gladstone on May 20), is as much a gastronomic celebration of fish as it is a damning exposé of the oceans’ exploitation by human industry and appetite. Tracing a whirlwind global tour from Manhattan’s top restaurants (many of whose menus include endangered species) to the ecologically disastrous shrimp farms of Tamil Nadu, Bottomfeeder is, in the author’s own words, “a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to the food-writing world,” rejecting unconscionable food-porn in favour of a search for ethical and healthy alternatives for today’s wary consumer.

Despite the book’s shocking, often horrific accounts of an industry that ignores international embargoes and borders, floods its farms with countless carcinogens and destroys marine environments with sea floor–ravaging bottom trawls, Bottomfeeder maintains an enthusiasm for the spoils of the seas — at least those fished responsibly, from sustainable stocks. Taras Grescoe was surprised to find himself with an even greater appetite for seafood after completing the book. “These days,” he says, “I eat fish at least three times a week.”

A typical Canadian novice to fish cookery myself, I met up with Grescoe at Montreal’s Jean-Talon market, which boasts three fishmongers and a Gaspesian boutique store, for a crash course in informed, conscientious seafood shopping.

Munching on snack-sized smelt (eaten whole, tail and all), we first perused the selection of canned fish at Aqua Mare on the market’s north end. “So what’s good?” I asked, admittedly clueless. Grescoe began with what wasn’t: “Don’t buy albacore or ‘white’ tuna, which is full of mercury and irresponsibly fished. Go for skipjack (chunk light) or anything with Alaska printed on the can — those are sustainable stocks. You also want to avoid Atlantic salmon, which is extinct in the wild.” (Bottomfeeder dedicates an entire, unsettling chapter to the mostly Norwegian-run Atlantic salmon farms of British Columbia, places teeming with disease — such as the dreaded sea louse — responsible for the decimation of wild Pacific salmon runs.) “This stuff, though, is great,” Grescoe continued, passing me a tin of sardines in sunflower oil. “So are herring [or kippers] and mackerel.”
Our next stop was the cooler of a neighbouring fish market, where fillets and whole fish were laid out over ice, garnished with the requisite wedges of lemon and parsley sprigs. Grescoe grilled the fishmonger with a series of questions, demanding to know where the fish were from, as well as how and when they’d been caught. The bewildered woman behind the counter couldn’t provide us with many answers, but recognizing that she was dealing with an expert, did recommend the wild Pacific salmon as opposed to the farmed stuff. But Grescoe wasn’t buying it.

“Even that’s not the best choice right now,” Grescoe explained to me as we made our way to shop No. 2. “Their stocks are down. Trout’s a good option, but it’s still a carnivore so you’ve got problems with things concentrating up the food chain.” At our next stop, I learned that Atlantic halibut, swordfish, red snapper and orange roughy were off-limits for a variety of reasons; Grescoe recommended sea bream, porgy and catfish instead. And while I’d gotten the impression from his book that shrimp of any stripe were bad news, Grescoe corrected me. “These little Nordic shrimp are bountiful and really healthy. It’s the big, imported ones that you’ve got to worry about.”

Grescoe’s main lesson was the underlying principle of his book: eat the bottomfeeders of the aquatic food chain, those little fish often wasted as feed for toxically farmed salmon and shrimp. The best part was that, unlike organic meats and produce, these healthier options were actually cheaper than their more popular counterparts. “Going around the world,” he told me before we parted ways, “you realize that there are all these cultures represented in Canadian cities like Toronto and Montreal that have a tradition of eating small, tasty fish. So they’re available. You just have to look for them.”

Scraping the bottom in Kensington

Toronto cook, food enthusiast and EYE WEEKLY contributor Sean Kelly Keenan trawls for Taras Grescoe “good-eats” in Toronto’s own Kensington Market.

The stout European fellow grilling up fresh sardines and clams out front suggests Seven Seas Fish Market (196 Baldwin, 416-593-9875) might be a good place for all your bottom feeder needs. And while there certainly is a wide selection from Grescoe’s “good-buys” section iced for your perusal, info about the source of your dinner may not be so forthcoming. An inquiry into whether or not they have halibut, Pacific or otherwise, elicits a wary stare followed by the strange answer, “No, never.” OK, what about Nordic shrimp? “That stuff only comes in the winter,” he says of the tasty cold water bites, considered by many to be a rite of spring. Moving on…

Across the street, Sea Kings Fish Market (189 Baldwin, 416-593-9949) doesn’t fare much better in the exposition section. Employing the seemingly common Kensington fishmonger “just ignore him and hope he drops his wallet on the way out” tactic, the most helpful information I receive is that yes, the mackerel are pretty cheap.

A few doors down, New Seaway Fish Market (195 Baldwin, 416-593-5192), yields pay dirt, in a way. Granted, the wild Pacific halibut ($11.99/lb) is nestled uncomfortably close to a glistening piece of Chilean sea bass ($15.99/lb for the scarlet letter of endangered fish), but counter staff are engaging and quick with answers. The trout turns out to be farmed (a good thing), and they even manage to talk me into a porgy over the red snapper. (Grescoe would approve.)

Ecology, yes. But economics?
Take Grescoe’s advice concerning lobster and oysters (oysters consume habitat-destroying algae) and you may be eating well, but at a stiff cost. Sticking to his smaller suggestions yields savings though. With mackerel, sardines and herring all running under $2/lb, the only evil fish that competes is shark ($1.69/lb). Mid-rangers such as Porgy and sea bream, however, average about the same as red snapper at $7/lb. And canned skipjack? How can you even ask?  SEAN KELLY KEENAN