For Seafood Scotland last night, the highlight of the Scottish Restaurant Awards 2013 was the presentation to the Fish People Café in Glasgow, winner of the ‘Best Seafood Restaurant of the Year’ category.
“Congratulations to the Fish People Café, which was a worthy winner of this award through their efforts to create outstanding seafood dishes, offer first class customer service and a top quality dining experience,” said Graham Young, head of Seafood Scotland. “The restaurant is a highly popular destination for seafood lovers and is about to become even more popular!” he added.
Sponsorship of the award is part of a wider package of activity being undertaken by Seafood Scotland to create awareness amongst chefs and the food service supply chain, of the wealth of seafood caught in Scottish waters.
“Our aim is to encourage chefs to support the industry by buying more Scottish seafood,” explained marketing manager Shona Price. “We are doing this by assisting them to source top quality products through our work with markets, processors and suppliers, which ensures that the supply chain understand the exacting needs of chefs.”
“As part of the sponsorship, Seafood Scotland sent all 33 finalists a seafood seasonality guide and a ‘Love Seafood, Love Scottish’ magnet to keep in their kitchens, reminding them to ‘think local’. We also took the 5pm.co.uk blogger JonathanTrew to Peterhead to blog about industry, and ensured that fish featured on the menu at the awards dinner, so that everyone had the opportunity to experience the amazing quality of Scottish seafood,” said Shona.
For owner Andy Bell and manager Graham Hamilton, winning the award was the culmination of a lot of hard work in building up a successful business, and acknowledgement of the passion that has been put into running the Fish People Cafe. “We were truly delighted to win this award!” exclaimed Graham. “We originally opened as a fish and chip shop, then we became a fish shop with seats, and now we’re Seafood Restaurant of the Year! Scottish seafood is so important to the restaurant industry in this country, and the quality ensures that we can serve our customers the very best. It’s great for Glasgow to have another seafood restaurant on the map and we’re all very proud of what we’ve achieved in a short time.”
Owners of the runner up restaurants Café Fish in Edinburgh and The Tollbooth in Stonehaven, congratulated the winner amidst their disappointment of being pipped to the post for the title!
Ongoing work for Seafood Scotland on the food service project includes a mapping exercise to identify the route to market for Scottish seafood, a presentation to newcomers to food service supply at a forthcoming consumer insight event in Aberdeen run by Seafish, a series of workshops on sustainable seafood supply for chefs being organised over the coming months, and some exciting work with pop up restaurants in the Autumn in major cities throughout the UK.
“We are putting a lot of effort into our work with chefs and suppliers and look forward to seeing an increased offering of Scottish seafood on menus over the next year,” said Shona.
FiskerForum.com
