Game Set and Catch – Wimbledon backs Sustainable Fish Cities!
The All England Lawn Tennis Club has joined some of the most prestigious food providers in London and signed the Sustainable Fish Cities pledge.
This is an assurance that all the fish served at the 2016 Championships fulfils the criteria of the city-wide campaign to transform the impact on the world’s depleting fish stocks.
Head of Catering at the All-England Lawn Tennis Club, Anthony Davies, said “Responsible sourcing has always been paramount to The Championships. Menus around the grounds, from food court outlets to the VIP Village chalets, serve an array of seafood, sushi and shellfish - brill, monkfish, lemon sole, salmon, halibut and crab."
A glimpse at the statistics shows that, on average, 12,000 kilos of poached and smoked salmon, and 16,080 portions of fish and chips are consumed during the Wimbledon Fortnight each year.
Davies continued; “Using sustainable produce is a priority for us. It’s all about the quality of the ingredients, making sure they are British, where appropriate, and from an ethical source. Increasingly, people have a desire to understand where their meal has come from. They want to know about provenance. We are keen to tell the story behind the ingredients, whether that is the strawberries from one farm in Kent, free range chickens from Sutton Hoo or brownies from a cottage bakery in Wales.”
Daily catches of wet fish travel straight from the boats, which arrive into ports across Britain at sunrise, to the Wimbledon kitchens where they are cleaned, filleted and cooked. Direct Seafoods has supplied fish and shellfish to The Championships since 2007. Its Sustainability Director, Laky Zervudachi, is famous for cycling around the city delivering boxes of the freshest seafood.
The All England Club is proud to sign the Sustainable Fish Cities pledge to ratify its commitment to sustainable fish, alongside organisations such as National Trust, Eurostar and John Lewis.
Find out more on the Food and Drink pages of Wimbledon.com
Published Tuesday 12 July 2016
Sustainable Fish: A campaign to protect precious marine environments and fishing livelihoods, and call for fish to be bought from sustainable sources. We want to show what can be done if people and organisations make a concerted effort to change their buying habits.
