Market shoppers warm to Ramsay's rant

Food & Drink

Saturday, May 10, 2008

By Linda McKee

St George's Market is about as good an advertisement for seasonal produce as you can get.

On any given Friday, the place is thronged with shoppers snapping up the fresh fruit, vegetables and fish that it's increasingly difficult to source in many areas where only cigarettes, tins and magazines can now be found in the corner shops.

While Gordon Ramsay's recommendation that restaurants should be fined if they don't use seasonal produce is considered a little extreme, the shoppers mostly agree with the sentiment.

Gillian dos Santos (50) and her daughter Morjane (16) were buying bagfuls of fresh fruit and veg with Gillian's mum Naomi Peyton from Belfast.

"I lived 15 years in France and I got very used to fresh fruit, fresh veg and fresh fish," Gillian says.

"I think seasonal food is very important for the people of Northern Ireland generally — they don't eat healthily. I really miss the fruit in France. You shouldn't go into a restaurant and pay £50 for things that have been lying around."

Morjane adds: "I think he's right — everything should be fresh."

Stallholder James Murdock (75) from Belfast says the likes of Deane's and Paul Rankin source their fresh produce from St George's Market — but there are others who simply contact a warehouse to have produce shipped in.

Instead, they should come to somewhere like the market and build up a rapport with a stallholder to source good regular produce, he advises.

"There's too much foreign stuff being used — it adds to the eco miles, " he says.

"At the minute a good lot of the stuff is local but at times our stuff is coming at the end of the season and you have to go abroad to get it. A bit of aubergine is grown here but not enough to do the Northern Ireland market.

"There's a lot of organic stuff grown but it's not nice to look at and it's still unproven."

But Melisa Neill (25), a hotel receptionist from Philadelphia who was shopping with her son Josh, doesn't think the pressure should be on restaurants to only use seasonal produce.

"I think you go to a restaurant to have something that you wouldn't necessarily have at home. You want to try something different at a restaurant," she says.

Her mother-in-law Isobel Neill (58) from Belfast said the experts argue that frozen food is as good as fresh, so you should be able to get seasonal vegetables at any time of the year.

"If more people were asking for seasonal vegetables, more restaurants would serve them," she says.

Meanwhile stallholder Jim Murdock (45) from Belfast isn't impressed with Ramsay's argument.

"Fruit and vegetables are never out of season — he doesn't know what he's talking about," he says.

"You only have so much local stuff that you can use. For example, asparagus is mostly imported although you do get some from mainland England.

"But things like cauliflower, savoy and cabbage are in season in most months of the year — you may have a couple of months in the year when it's imported stuff. The only fruit we grow here would be cooking apples and strawberries.

"He's talking about local produce — I am referring to supplying restaurants the year round. A restaurant phoned me one Tuesday looking for grenadillas — I found a company and we had it by Saturday."