During a recent tasting, it was unfortunate for our wine rep to start with a NV Blanc de Blancs from Diebolt-Vallois. This blew our socks off and the rest of the tasting was a write-off as Nicolas and I kept on coming back to the champagne for further mouthfuls while ignoring all the other wines our rep had brought us. The Diebolt-Vallois is the first to be added to our new Growers Champagne section in our wine list, and we will soon add 2 or 3 more. We will keep these in minimal stock, maybe 3 bottles of each so that we can regularly change them when something newer and shinier comes along. I thoroughly recommend you try these when you next come in.

Newsletter

January 2012

Happy New Year to you. Thank you for your support and business over the last year. Despite the world-wide doom and gloom, the changes and introductions to our menus have done well in persuading many more of you to come and dine with us, and I hope that you have enjoyed your visits. I am always looking for feedback so we can improve our standards as a team and provide you with a better and better service. If you ever want to contact me or any of my staff for any reason, please email me on tim@theseafoodrestaurant.com or the restaurant directly on StAndrews@theseafoodrestaurant.com.

In September we introduced the Express Lunch Menu. This is a 2 course (starter and main) lunch menu for only £12.95. This menu was primarily aimed at local business people to offer an inexpensive and healthy lunch option which could be had within a 1 hour lunch break. In St Andrews there seems to be an abundance of snack bars, sandwich shops and cafes but very few opportunities to eat fresh, well-cooked food. At £12.95 this menu competes directly with these fast-food outlets and we have seen a huge increase in the number of our lunch customers as a result of this. We are able to produce this amazing deal by working closely with our suppliers and the markets.

You may have heard of the issues surrounding the fishing industry and in particular of something called by-catch. What Hugh’s Fish Fight is trying to do is to force fishermen to land their by-catch, which is the other fish they catch when targeting another, usually more profitable, species. This by-catch arrives at the markets and is frequently sold as a ‘mixed box’. We make use of these mixed boxes by using them on our Express Lunch Menu, so by choosing to eat from our Express Menu you are doing your bit to help the problem of throwing away perfectly good fish.

www.itison.com

 We have agreed to put up a couple of offers on www.itison.com, the Scottish daily deals website. These deals will be available on Monday 9th January for 24 hours only, so make sure you are signed up to www.itison.com to take advantage. These deals are exclusive to itison.com members and run until the 29th February 2012.

YouTube

I am thinking about starting a YouTube channel for the restaurant (mainly because everywhere else is doing it!) Various ideas that have risen are to provide mini-vids on cooking and preparing seafood and other cooking skills; quick wine recomendations and in particular food and wine pairing or working with Luvians on wines that are readily accessible for the St Andrews locals; behind the scenes clips of running a restaurant or some live footage of the kitchens during service. If you have any ideas or thoughts about this, I would really welcome them.

Facebook and Twitter

Remember to come and join us on your preferred social site. Our ever-changing Express Lunch is posted every day as well as other offers. Or come and join in the conversations and laughs.

Become a fan of our Facebook page by clicking here.

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http://www.theseafoodrestaurant.com/st-andrews/festive-menus/

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Now time to get the decorations out the loft…

Good luck, Craig.

Well that did indeed prove there was a lot of Scottish haddock around. The snag however, is that it did not prove was that this haddock was caught in a sustainable fashion.

But this morning, in what is really a fantastic event for the UK and for Scottish fisheries, Mike is bringing me the first landed Scottish Fisheries Sustainable Accredited haddock, and I will be cooking the first Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Accredited haddock at Le Manoir for lunch.

They say good news comes in pairs. Well, the UK’s GDP for the summer quarter was twice what was expected; and North Sea haddock is the first Scottish whitefish to be certified with the gold standard of sustainability. Last year the catch was 34.7 thousand tonnes and it was worth £34.2m to the Scottish economy. As Alex Salmond, the very appropriately named first minister of Scotland says, haddock is of huge economic importance to the entire UK, as it ranks fourth in volume and retail sale of in shot up year on year to 30th September by 5.4% in value and 17.7% in volume.

The hoops the Scottish fisheries have had to jump though to are truly formidable – these are serious, difficult to meet criteria – and the certification body is truly independent. So this is a huge victory for our food supply, for common sense, and for our purses and appetites. Haddock is, after all, one of our most delicious species, a complete joy to cook and a fish absolutely beloved by the British consumer. Before you hug your local chippy, just check that what he’s frying tonight is MSC accredited North Sea Haddock. But this is a win-every-which-way situation – and heaven knows we need a few of those just now.