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| Why boats do boats like this find it so difficult to land top-quality fish locally? |
Celebrity chef Rick Stein has hit out at the "bureaucracy" around quotas stopping him sourcing local fish at one of his new restaurant in Cornwall.
Rick opened his ninth venue five months ago, in Porthleven, which specialises in locally caught species. But Rick and his son Jack, who runs the restaurant, have revealed they have faced constant challenges by all the barriers designed to protect fish quotas. He said they are bogged down with so much paperwork and lengthy waiting times that they have struggled to get any fish straight directly from the town's harbour.
Rick said: "In my day, you just went straight to the boats. I didn't realise there was all this paperwork involved now. "All I say is that we have to buy local fish. If you go round the restaurants tasting food, you'll soon know the ones that use fresh fish."
According to Rick, buying supplies of fresh fish as close to the restaurant as possible was fundamental to the businesses ethos. But to cope with the shortfall, they have had to resort to buying fish from Newlyn, which is 14 miles away, and sharing catches from the businesses main restaurant and cafe in Padstow.
Jack said: "There's a lot of paperwork for supplying from boats - more than you could imagine. "It's important, of course. I realise it's there to protect stocks, and it's a difficulty we have to accept, otherwise the fish will disappear."
Rick Stein's restaurant in Porthleven opened in November last year, in the old China clay building on the harbour.
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