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Food Food & Drink

Fishing for enviro-eats

ONE THAT GOT AWAY (581 King West, at Portland, 647-351-6153) Complete meals for $13 per person, including tax, tip and a soda. Average main $9. Open Monday to Wednesday 11 am to 10 pm, Thursday to Saturday 11 am to 11 pm, Sunday noon to 7 pm. Unlicensed. Access: one step at door, washrooms in basement. Rating: NNNN


The more we eco-minded consumers learn about seafood, the less we eat the stuff. Cheap, unsustainable fish, no thanks. But where’s the alternative? When the One That Got Away chip shop launched last fall, its chalkboard menu admirably stated, “We only use sustainable fish.” Pop into the busy King West take-away today and you’ll notice those words in the lower right corner have been conspicuously erased. Is the One no longer on board?

“Not at all,” says chef Neil Coutinho. “About 70 per cent of the fish we use is certified Ocean Wise. Not everything’s available all the time.”

Today there are perfectly deep-fried fillets of beer-battered halibut ($12.99) and haddock ($7.99), the later paired with not-so-Wise calamari, scallops and shrimp sautéed in panko crumbs to become the Fish Basket ($14.99). All mains in the “classic” section of the card come with unusually eggy tartar sauce, industrial coleslaw and regulation Yukon Gold spuds fried in trans-fat-free oil and lightly dusted with kosher salt. (H. Salt this ain’t.)

If the chef’s name rings a bell, you might recall Coutinho from a certain little shack called Chippy’s. There, back in 03, he and Susur manager John Lee took the lowly local chippy to the next level with upscale ingredients and prices to match. Since then, he’s jumped on the health-conscious bandwagon, a move Project Runway’s Michael Kors would say is right on trend for the market.

And so we get beautifully textured fish cakes with minimal filler ($8.49), and great pink slabs of grilled Arctic char ($11.99) and de rigueur organic mesclun tossed with sunflower seeds in pink apple cider vinaigrette. Those same greens show up in sandwiches of sweet Lake Huron pickerel on porous Portuguese buns spread with garlic-kicked mayo à la College Street’s Fish Store.

At first glance, the One’s barramundi wrap ($9.99) is just another burrito wannabe. At first bite, however, the familiar grilled tortilla exterior gives way to fabulously flaky flesh offset by a salad’s-worth of greens and additional flavour layers of both ripe tomato and mango salsas. Most anywhere else, “chowder” is the polite way restaurants describe the recycling of somewhat past-its-prime fish. Even worse? “Spicy chowder.” But Coutinho’s gumbos are far from iffy leftovers, the creamy Seafood Chowder thick with the day’s fresh trimmings and an undertow of dill, the Manhattan Chowder almost a marinara sauce (both $4.75, with a packet of “all natural” oyster crackers, whatever that means in these post-genetically-altered days).

On the subject of non-sustainable seafood, Coutinho offers, “It’s like Catch 22 – you think you’re eating healthy but you’re actually killing the planet.”

stevend@nowtoronto.com

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