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Marston's updates pubs' seafood offer

l Seafood champions Mark and Peter Petrou outside their award-winning fish and chip shop

November 24, 2007: A campaign launched by Marston’s Pub Company to encourage licensees to focus on seafood has resulted in a whole host of new dishes with modern twists.

The competition, run in conjunction with the Seafood Council, invited tenants to think creatively and come up with some different options, with Rick Stein’s book Seafood on offer for best suggestions.

The winners included Nicholas Leake, of the Folly Inn, Stableford, near Bridgenorth, who created a dish of poached fillet of plaice, rolled with smoked salmon and baby spinach, sat on a Kenyan bean salad, sauté new potatoes.

“We always ensure that the seafood options on our menu are from sustainable sources. I think it is vitally important to preserve our fish resources but still provide our customers with a choice of seafood dishes,” said Nicholas.

Other winners were Richard Macey, from the Fountain Inn, Clent, who poached cod in Pedigree shandy with oyster mushroom spinach and Pedigree oyster sauce, and Mathew Shropshall, of The Crown, at Codsall Wood, who glazed fennel, citrus fruit and caper sauce with a prawn crust.

Marston’s Pub Company catering manager, Ben Bartlett, said: “We recommend that our pubs confine their menu of seafood to the most responsibly managed stocks, ensuring the best seafood to choose in respect of sustainability of supply, environmental impact and avoidance of unnecessary or inefficient transportation.

“The competition attracted a lot of attention, with some great dishes coming through.”

Marston’s has produced a Cooking with Fish DVD showing techniques, recipes and advice on buying seafood, to assist all outlets in promoting their menu.

Marston’s licensee Mark Petrou is also flying the flag for seafood, as the owner of UK Fish and Chip shop of the Year 2007.

Mark has appeared on several TV shows, including Ready Steady Cook, and has a keen following from celebrity chef Brian Turner and TV film critic Barry Norman. Mark runs three premises in Cambridgeshire — Bar 23, in March, The Anchor, in Wimblington, and the famous Petrou Brothers Fish and Chip Shop, in Chatteris, with his brother Peter.

Mark is due to appear on ITV 1’s Tonight Show with Trevor McDonald, campaigning to educate viewers about the “global demand for seafood and encouraging chefs to source more sustainable species of fish like coley or pollock as substitutes to the desperately over fished cod”.

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