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After a Fortnight of serves, volleys, tie breaks match winners, we bring you another newsflash... from Head of Catering Anthony Davies.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club has joined some of the most prestigious food providers in London and signed the Sustainable Fish Cities pledge. This is an assurance that all the fish served at the 2016 Championships fulfils the criteria of a city-wide campaign to transform the impact on the world’s depleting fish stocks.
Responsible sourcing has always been paramount to The Championships. Menus around the grounds, from food court outlets to the VIP Village chalets, serve an array of seafood, sushi and shellfish - brill, monkfish, lemon sole, salmon, halibut and crab. A glimpse at the statistics shows that, on average, 12,000 kilos of poached and smoked salmon, and 16,080 portions of fish and chips are consumed during the Wimbledon Fortnight each year.
“Using sustainable produce is a priority for us,” says Davies. “It’s all about the quality of the ingredients, making sure they are British, where appropriate, and from an ethical source. Increasingly, people have a desire to understand where their meal has come from. They want to know about provenance. We are keen to tell the story behind the ingredients, whether that is the strawberries from one farm in Kent, free range chickens from Sutton Hoo or brownies from a cottage bakery in Wales.”
Daily catches of wet fish travel straight from the boats, which arrive into ports across Britain at sunrise, to the Wimbledon kitchens where they are cleaned, filleted and cooked. Direct Seafoods has supplied fish and shellfish to The Championships since 2007. Its Sustainability Director, Laky Zervudachi, is famous for cycling around the city delivering boxes of the freshest seafood.
Smoked salmon is provided by the Severn and Wye Smokery on the edge of the Royal Forest of Dean, between two rivers synonymous with wild salmon.
The fish acquires its unique taste courtesy of traditional smoking processes, using local oak wood and done by hand. Owner Richard Cook works with the chefs at Wimbledon to achieve their exact specification for flavour.
The All England Club is proud to sign the Sustainable Fish Cities pledge to ratify its commitment to sustainable fish, alongside organisations such as National Trust, Eurostar and John Lewis.
Overfishing is an issue of acute global concern, threatening the livelihoods of fishers, the future of fish supplies, and our marine ecosystems. By serving demonstrably sustainable fish, the All England Club is ensuring that hundreds of thousands of fans and visitors can choose fish without worrying that they are eating a species that is at risk or fished or farmed using damaging methods.
Find out more on the Food and Drink pages of Wimbledon.com
