| Hi, it’s Kate Krader, your friendly London-based food editor, but I’m coming in hot from the West Coast of the US this week, on the occasion of the second annual Bloomberg Green Seattle. The event is simultaneously sobering and hopeful about the possibilities of saving the world at this late-in-the-game moment. Food was of course a big topic here: It’s many people’s “gateway drug” to sustainability, as one clever attendee told me. And I would say that only one thing outshone this subject at the three-day event—which featured topics as diverse as whether we will ever see EV-style planes and what’s in store for climate tech investments as covered by Khosla Ventures LLC Founder Vinod Khosla—and that was the one, the only Jane Fonda. The award-winning Hollywood icon talked about being popular now, having gone through periods when she wasn’t, and making people mad enough to fight President Donald Trump’s environmentally unfriendly tax bill. (And here’s a shoutout to the charismatic chief executive officer of Patagonia Inc., Ryan Gellert, on the subject of navigating an eco-focused business under the current administration.)  “This is our documentary moment,” said actor and activist Jane Fonda, discussing the need for climate education and the “fight for the future.” Watch her panel here. Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg But let’s talk about food, as we did in Seattle. I moderated two (awesome) panels. The first focused on how to run a climate-resilient restaurant, and sitting on the sofa opposite me was Renee Erickson, a cult-favorite chef in the Pacific Northwest, and Anne McBride, the vice president for impact at the James Beard Foundation. I am by nature an optimist, but there wasn’t a lot of encouraging news. Chief among Erickson’s concerns is the state of farmed fish worldwide and, in particular, salmon. Even though the focus at almost all her 10 restaurants and bars is seafood, she rarely serves salmon, one of the world’s most popular fish. It’s also one that was wild and abundant in Washington not so long ago. Instead, the chef is paying attention to an outrageously unlikely product, cell-based salmon from Wildtype. The San Francisco company is at the forefront of lab-grown fish and manufacturers its salmon using giant steel vats. Their facility has a whole microbrewery vibe (in fact, it used to be one). Wildtype is producing a couple of products including a smoked variety, but here’s the thing—it’s not yet designed to be cooked. Still, there’s plenty of opportunity for raw salmon dishes, and Erickson, who says the taste is good, is getting ready to serve it in several tapas-style dishes at her terrific Walrus & the Carpenter in August. “Is it my last meal? No,” she said, on stage. But does it have potential to be a perfect protein add-on for an infinite number of poke bowls? “Yes,” Erickson said. Cell-based salmon is such a crazy proposition from a top chef that Fonda even called it out in her conversation.  Seafood is a ripe area for lab-grown innovations. Back in 2018, we ran a “Food Ingredient Panic Meter” in Bloomberg Businessweek, and two major items, octopus and eel, ranked high. Photographer: Caroline Tompkins for Bloomberg Businessweek The Beard Foundation’s McBride on the other hand is paying attention to unexpected consequences of the warming planet. Among them: dish authenticity. She discussed the challenges facing Los Angeles chef Vanda Asapahu of Ayara Thai, who’s having trouble sourcing a traditional Thai ingredient, cilantro root. It seems that the soil that’s home to some of her herbs has warmed so much that the cilantro is bolting (that is, prematurely sprouting) without creating sizable roots. The chef is now looking to sub in alternate products such as green onions. And that raises a huge question: How authentic is that dish now? It was hard to find a non-soil-warming ray of sunshine in that conversation, but my second panel, with star restaurateur Simon Kim, was more hopeful. His growing empire includes two of New York’s hottest dining rooms, the Korean steakhouse Cote and the fried chicken emporium Coqodaq. (There are also Cote outposts in Miami and Singapore and a ginormous new one coming to Las Vegas this fall). It’s impossible to make a green case for a steakhouse. Kim says he’s constantly on the lookout for more sustainable beef; he currently sources a lot from the certified humane company Niman Ranch and is checking out seaweed-fed cows, which can help cut their methane emissions, according to research from the University of California at Davis. But Kim is a business guy, and if using the most sustainable beef means his steaks are tough and his dining room is half empty, then he’s done having that conversation.  Trying to stand tall with Kim, left, and Patagonia’s Gellert after our panels at Bloomberg Green. Photographer: Emily Castro At Coqodaq, Kim has found a way to make a contribution to the sustainable restaurant movement. His mission was to create “better fried chicken,” so he found regenerative farms in Pennsylvania (he won’t name them) where the birds are free- range and humanely raised and feed on surplus vegetables. During processing, they’re air-chilled rather than the conventional water-chilled, which saves H2O (and makes for more delicious chicken). The oil they’re fried in is made from sustainably managed sugarcane. Coqodaq is a model that Kim is almost certainly going to roll out to other cities, and why not? The waitlist in New York is 1,000-plus on any given night. And in 2024, Coqodaq’s revenue was $14 million. This year it’s projected to be $20 million. To go back to where we started, I know, fried chicken may not be save-the-world stuff. But optimistically I say, here’s to the day when it will be. Connect with Kate via e-mail or Instagram. |
