Scotland's most northerly mainland restaurant that strictly serves seafood in season, has been named the UK Sustainable Restaurant of the Year.
Raymond Blanc, President of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, presented the award to Jim Cowie, chef-patron of The Captain's Galley, at a gala lunch in London.
Mr Cowie, who worked as a fish trader for 35 years and had never so much as boiled an egg before opening his harbour-side restaurant in Scrabster, Caithness 13 years ago, now serves customers dishes like monkfish liver and saithe in ginger and miso broth using only local seasonal fish grown sustainably.
The Captain's Galley, which was also named Scottish Sustainable Restaurant of the Year, won the award jointly with Daylesford, the three strong group of cafes in the Cotswolds and Kensington.
Raymond Blanc praised the Captain's Galley and winners of all of the 19 Sustainable Restaurant Awards. He said: "These awards are for me as important as Michelin Stars. They represent what everybody who is passionate about food should regard as the perfect ingredients: good ethics, an understanding that food touches every part of our lives and a desire to ensure that future generations will be able to experience from it the same pleasure as we have."
However, we also have a list of the top ten sustainable restaurants in the UK and there are f
Four Scottish restaurants feature on the Sustainable Restaurant Awards top ten: Captain's Galley, The Bay Fish & Chip Shop in Stonehaven, Café St Honore, Edinburgh, and The Scottish Café & Restaurant, Edinburgh.
Mr Cowie is running a sustainable seafood festival for the first time later this year to die in with Scotland Year of Food and Drink.
"Sustainable is most abused word in English language, but our customers are left under no illusions - the menu tells them that if it's not in season it won't be on the menum" said Mr Cowie. "Customers must work with us. Then they're playing their part in the recovery of stocks.
"We're not cheap, but we're honest with ourselves and customers."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.Â
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.Â
That is invaluable.Â
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article