From Here to Pacifica
Balancing the lack of local fish with the draw of sustainability
By Stewart Oksenhorn • Photographs by Daniel Bayer

Some years ago, when he was working in the kitchens of a series of top Aspen restaurants, Bryan Nelson didn’t pay a ton of attention to sustainability issues. But over the past five years, he has made up for lost time. Every day, Nelson, executive chef at Pacifica, surveys reports on what is in season and precisely where his products are coming from.

Not only does Nelson order as many of his fruits and vegetables as possible from nearby Paonia and Palisade, he spent much of this spring at Paonia’s Hillside Acres, an organic farm, helping to coordinate planting to the benefit of both the farm’s operations and his own cooking.

“People want to know more now where their food is coming from. In our community and communities like ours, people want to know what they’re putting in their mouths,” says Nelson, 38, “and that they’re not depleting the sources. They’re trying to lessen their impact.”

Nelson, however, has gotten well ahead of the general population on sustainability: For instance, this summer he will oversee the first rooftop garden to grace an Aspen restaurant—at Pacifica, where he is executive chef.

Still, he understands that being a sustainable seafood-oriented restaurant in downtown Aspen, located nearly 1,000 miles from the closest ocean is difficult; that serving the Alaskan halibut and salmon that Nelson adores, and featuring a raw bar stocked with California oysters and Atlantic lobster, is fundamentally flawed as an environmentally conscious endeavor.

“There’s no local fish—that’s the tough thing, to tell people we’re local, when obviously we’re not getting our fish locally, we’re not getting our tuna locally,” Nelson says.

Given that reality—and that he is determined to give diners an exceptional meal—Nelson goes the distance to make sure that his purchases and practices are as sound as can be. Each day he checks the website of Seafood Choices Alliance, an international group that advises the seafood industry on sustainability matters.  He reads the reports from Seafood Watch, a service of California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium that gives real-time updates on which fish are recommended and which should be avoided. He keeps in close contact with his purveyors to find out exactly which waters his fish came from. He orders domestic fish as much as possible.

Nelson is well versed in the intricacies of seafood sustainability.  Like most any knowledgeable consumer, he prefers wild fish to farmed. But he makes distinctions between fish that is ranched and that which is farmed, and he has taken a close enough look at the Colorado Catch operation in Alamosa that farms Colorado striped bass to put it on Pacifica’s menu. It is one of their most popular dishes, served with locally grown greens and peas and accompanied by a mirin garlic chili sauce.

Much of his salmon comes from a company in Washington state that contracts with a Native American group that catches the fish in an eco-friendly manner—tasting all the better when served with Savoy garlic spinach, Colorado potatoes and a local blackberry bordelaise.

The main thing Nelson keeps his eye on, for the health of both fish populations and human diners, is what is in season. The Pacifica menu changes constantly, because the chef is adamant about serving only fish that is in season. And he uses his wait staff as an educational tool, to inform diners of the wisest choices they can make when ordering.

“It’s about not putting extra strain on commercial fisheries, because they’re at the mercy of the consumers. If consumers want it, they’re going to feel that demand,” says Nelson, a Denver native who attended the Western Culinary Institute in Portland and worked at San Francisco’s highly regarded La Folie. “But that’s the beauty of being a small operation: I can change the menu daily, and I do. Halibut just came in season, and boom! I put it on the menu.”

And, yes, serving an Aspen diner Hawaiian ono may not be as ecoconscious as serving Delta County beef, but Nelson is content that he is dishing up his fish in the most earth-friendly manner possible.  “I can sleep at night knowing I’m doing the best I can to provide a quality product—and lessen my impact on the ecological food chain,” he says.

GO FIND IT !
Pacifica Seafood & Raw Bar
3017 S. Mill St., Aspen
(970) 920-9775
www.pacificaaspen.com