Review and Tidbit: RM Seafood, Las Vegas and more on sustainable seafood

I just happened on this article in the New York Times about sustainable seafood. I love reading this kind of stuff...this guy is doing a fish co-op!

And for locals here in Morgantown, there's a great new article on Richwood Grill, which has some info on seafood. I think this is the best article on Richwood Grill that I've read.

I've been wanting to do very short reviews of our list of favorite restaurants, so here's some info on RM Seafood in Las Vegas. I was on a work trip, and since it was right before the holidays, I was thinking it would be good to eat light and clean. Sushi would be perfect!

I thought that I found out about RM Seafood on sustainablesushi.net, but now I can't find it when I search. It must have been when I saw that Nobu is NOT a place that serves sustainable seafood that I looked for another place to go. I had also seen this in a magazine on a United flight on the way home from New Orleans in October. Hadn't had sushi for years, but the article about sustainable sushi caught my eye.

Anyway, here is the chef's mission statement (which totally sucked me in)...

"At RM Seafood, we are committed to use organically grown, sustainable produce and sustainably caught seafood. We have made a public commitment to solely purchase sustainable wines by June 2008 and 95 percent of the menu proteins come from sustainably raised or caught seafood. It is our goal at RM Seafood to help our guest connect their individual buying decisions to the health of the oceans and the soil."

So, I was obviously anxious to try RM Seafood, and it was on the entirely opposite side of the strip from where I was staying (i.e., the side closest to Treasure Island, Caesar's Palace, etc), tucked in a corner in Mandalay Bay. A 20-30 minute walk, but definitely worth it. The walk seemed safe enough...I wasn't nervous at all.

My luggage got lost (argh) so I was dressed very casually, in jeans and a cashmere cardi and sneakers, but I felt very comfortable there. I did not have a reservation, which was no problem, I sat at a high table in the bar. Ambiance was clean and modern, there was a tv in the bar with sports on.

I don't know if I'd say this place is kid-friendly, although it was loud enough that kids probably wouldn't be disruptive if they were well-behaved.

The servers were very friendly, with lots of good advice. Not snobby at all, and very interested in the fact that the restaurant serves sustainable seafood.

So on t0 the chow. There was bread with the meal, little biscuits and corn muffins. I wanted to not eat them, but they were irresistable. (Oh well, the 30 minute walk, right???) On my first visit (yes, I went twice), I had the garlic tuna sashimi and the dayboat scallop nigiri for my meal. On the second trip, I had some Taylor Bay scallops and the oyster sampler. Seven oysters on the half shell, all from different places. The small menu described the origin of each, with characteristic flavors. It was so interesting! One said that it would taste like cucumbers, another would have the taste of pumpkin seeds. They were all right on!

So in a nutshell, easily some of the best sushi/seafood I have ever had...and guilt-free to boot!

The oysters were a lot of fun, I thought very approachable for someone who hasn't tried oysters before. They were small in size and very manageable. (I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of having an oyster in my mouth for TOO long.

The price wasn't cheap, around $50. a trip. But, I did have a glass of wine each time, which was probably around $10. Well worth it, though. And I would imagine comparable with any other upscale sushi joint in Vegas.

Will definitely go back whenever I'm in Las Vegas. In fact, if I would have had the time, I would have gone back a third time on the same trip. Definitely a good departure from the indulgence, noise, etc. that abounds in that city. LOVE!

Take a look at the website...there's good info on sustainable seafood there.

Tidbit: More on sustainable seafood

Being stuck here in town because of the snow, we obviously didn't get to do the reviews that we had planned, which was a real bummer. Instead of a night on the town in DC, Friday was spent on the town in Morgantown. We headed to the Warner to see "Up in the Air." (Short movie review: I did not love it.) After that, we walked across the street to Madeline's.

Now I have never considered Madeline's to be a place with a lot of local food. (Sometimes the specials menu mentions local salad greens or something.) I usually order a vegetarian dish, because I don't know if they are serving meat that was grass fed, treated humanely, not pumped full of hormones, or whatever. But on the heels of the my last post which mentioned sustainable seafood, I was thinking this would be apropos.

I love fish, or any kind of seafood for that matter. But some of the info you can find, especially on Atlantic salmon, will just knock your socks off. No doubt about it, that's some stuff you don't want to eat...

So onward and upward...not Friday, but a few weeks ago, I asked the server at Madeline's where the mussels came from (there are a couple of appetizers with mussels). She said Chile. I wasn't sure if that's a good thing, so I skipped them. Instead, I ordered the Maryland crab soup (more or less local). And then Friday night, I was tempted to order the shrimp, and I asked where they came from. The server said Thailand. And again, I ordered the Maryland crab soup.

I didn't have my iPhone either time, which I would normally use to look this stuff up, to find out if the source of the fish makes it a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." And, I like to find out whether there's a high risk for contamination with heavy metals or poisons as well.

Here are a couple of good places to find this info. Check them out to see which one works best for you.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood WATCH
Easy to use, you can just search for a type of seafood and get an easy-to-read chart indicating Best Choice, Good Alternative, or Avoid based on sustainability, with notes at the bottom about possible contamination. There's an iPhone app, and a downloadable card that you can print to fold up and carry with you. A lot of great info.

Sea Choice
This one also has an iPhone app and printable resources. I haven't used it much, but it looks really good. The info here should be same as Monterey Bay Aquarium. This site seems a little more streamlined.

Sustainable Sushi
There's a blog here, with sushi restaurant reviews as well. This one's nice because you can search for a fish by its sushi name. (Speaking of sustainable sushi, I think this is where I found info for RM Seafood in Las Vegas. Amazing. Best seafood I have ever eaten...more on this later.)

Vital Choices
I swear this isn't a commercial, but I order seafood from Vital Choices and it's fantastic. Good, clean, sustainable seafood. Kind of pricey, but I try to hit up the salmon and halibut specials. And they do free shipping for orders over $99, so I stock up. The spot prawns are more like lobster (which, incidentally I don't eat...the dilemma) than shrimp, beautiful and out of this world. Lots of info on this website as well.

So, as it turns out, I could have ordered the mussels at Madeline's, and felt comfortable that I was eating a sustainably harvested creature with a low risk for contamination. Skipping the shrimp from Thailand was a good idea, and of course the Maryland crab was fine. Next time, I'm all over the Mussels Diablo!!!

ps. A big shout out to Natasha at Madeline's for being so lovely and answering my "where does it come from" questions with a smile!

The List so far...

So, like I said, to get things rolling we wanted to put up a list of places that we've been and loved, with local, organic, sustainable food. To me, these are places you can go and feel really good about what you're eating (my mouth is watering as I type this list!!!) and also about the fact that you're supporting folks who are doing something awesome. In fact, if I visit any of these cities, these restaurants are all places I can't/won't miss. The menus are usually fascinating to read, which is especially good if you drop in solo. We'll probably do full reviews at later dates (because we'll surely go again). Over the next week or two, I'll try to do mini retro reviews of all of them.

The list is a little shorter than I'd like it to be, mainly for two reasons. One, lots of places aren't doing local, organic, sustainable (dare I say, especially on the east coast???). Two, we tend to go back to the same places!

We're certainly looking to build up the list, so suggestions are absolutely welcome!

Asheville, NC
Early Girl Eatery

Athens, OH:
Casa Nueva

Columbus, OH:
Jeni's (ice cream)
North Star Cafe
Rigsby's Kitchen

Las Vegas, NV:
RM Seafood

Morgantown, WV:
Richwood Grill

New York, NY:
Angelica Kitchen
Applewood

Orlando, FL:
Primo

Pittsburgh, PA:
Bona Terra

Tampa, FL:
Bern's

Washington, DC:
Restaurant Nora

Minifesto?

I read the word "minifesto" on a cereal box the other day. Maybe this is the beginning of our minifesto...

So, my sis, my brother-in-law, and my best friend and I are going to try to put some of our detective work to good use. For the past couple of years we've been really enjoying digging up new places to eat when we travel, or even when we just hang out locally. Like I said in the our "profile" info, we always look for local, organic, sustainable. (I'm probably the biggest stickler for that, and if I don't know where the meat came from, I'll order vegetarian.)

In the beginning, my brother-in-law was kind of surprised by my ability to find sometimes "unusual" places to eat, and my sis was often apprehensive about the menus. (Haley's always been a good sport, up for anything.)

We decided to work on a blog (and my sis may not realize this) a couple of weeks ago after we dined at Rigsby's Kitchen in Columbus, OH. Mindy (my sis), who as I said is often the most apprehensive, really just dug into the menu before anyone else. And I was so impressed, because she has really changed in that regard. I mean, we all grew up thinking that eating out at Red Lobster was LIVING. We're from super small towns, and we don't fancy ourselves *foodies* or super-sophisticated. We often have questions that any other average person might have, and we thought we could pass on some of the answers to others who are looking for similar experiences. (And give SHOUT OUTS to fabulous restaurants at the same time!)

What we'll try to do are restaurant reviews in a standardized format, that are super-helpful. And then Jeff, Mindy, and Haley will all post on some of their own topics, food-related of course. For example, Jeff and Mindy have a bunch of kids and they are starting a push with their family for *better* food at home...

Our first restaurant review will be this weekend. Haley and I are going local in Morgantown, WV at Richwood Grill for the "Rum and Single Origin Chocolate Dinner." Plus, I'm going to put up a list of some of our favs from all over, to get things rolling.