Chile battling to save a favourite clam

dney, we had to adapt, so of a fast casual restaurant like eli in Malaysia, what we’re fast fine dining,” says Brian. ne dining is a concept that is catching on in places like and New York, where urbanites have nice meals without the t formality and long hours assoith fine dining. Fast fine dining es on this, offering customers bly-priced, well-cooked gourmet beautifully appointed restauth minimal wait times. e idea is that people will order r-the-counter and proceed to ch bistro-style restaurant and r there. All of this will be done 0 minutes, so you get very highood, great ambience and quick with convenience and value,” an. gn with this concept and ensure utput, Dave’s Deli in Sydney rs five items on its menu: roast beef and chicken pies, lasagna, ork belly and gourmet pork usages. Dishes comes with a choice of sides including truffle mash, roasted vegetables, coleslaw and gravy. Everything is made on-site and cooked with care. “The idea of fast fine food is you want to serve very high-quality food, but it only works if your menu is very concise and limited. So then you can focus on consistency, because we are looking at doing 200 to 300 covers a day. And I reckon that people don’t want so much variety. They just want a good meal to get through their day,” he says.

The concept of Dave’s Deli expanding to Australia sounds great in theory, but there’s an anomaly in this seemingly picture-perfect equation. Why would a Malaysian restaurant serving Western food thrive in Australia, where something like roast chicken is easily available in most (Australian) eateries?

“Okay, so the thing about our food is, at the end of the day, when you look at it, it’s just roast chicken, lasagna and pies. And some people have actually joked that it’s like us bringing coals to Newcastle. But my argument to that is it comes down to the food that we’re serving. Yes, it is just roast chicken but it is not your textbook roast chicken – it is Malaysian-influenced.

“When you think about Malaysian food, it is very bold and flavourful, so that’s what we’re doing with our food. When people eat our food, there’s 30 years of experience and history that’s gone into it already. It will differentiate us from the rest of the competition,” says Brian.

And Brian’s not just spouting platitudes: the food is really good! The roast chicken is as reassuringly toothsome as always, which explains why 18,000 roast chicken meals are sold every month across all the outlets in Malaysia! The beef pie is delicious – a soft and yielding beef and mushroom mixture inside with a lovely crust outside. The lasagna is reminiscent of old-school renditions – filling and satisfying on every count, while the roast pork belly is sensationally good – golden crackling atop meltingly tender, juicy meat. The sides on offer are also worthy of attention, especially the truffle mash, which is soft and creamy with rich truffle undertones.

All the meals in Dave’s Deli Sydney will be priced from A$14.95 (RM46.90) to A$17.50 (RM54.90), including a drink. The team is also looking at introducing seasonal options, as it is cheaper to buy fresh produce in tandem with the seasons. “We might have more root vegetables in winter and more salads in summer – things like that lah,” says Brian.

Now that Dave’s Deli has a foot in Sydney, Brian says it is only a matter of time before they widen their reach in Australia.

“I’m going to focus on Australia – it’s a huge country. Even just Sydney is huge! But because of the concept that we’re doing, we cannot scale it so far. I don’t want to make the same mistake that we made previously, so it’s all about sustainable growth – it’s going to be slow and steady,” he says. LONG one of the country’s favourite seafoods, Chile’s macha clam has become a victim of its own popularity, with over-exploitation forcing authorities to ban clam fishing in all but a few areas to help stocks recover.

From humble seaside taverns to exclusive Santiago restaurants, machas have long been a mainstay of the menu in seafood-loving Chile.

Found in the surf-swept sandbanks along the coasts of Chile and southern Peru, the macha is fished in the traditional way by men and women who brave icy waves and riptides to wrest their prize from the sea.

But since last August, fishing for machas has been banned in the central regions of Valparaiso, O’Higgins and El Maule after industrial-scale extraction has all but destroyed stocks.

The future for the clam lies further north, where the fishing community in La Serena is held up as an example of a sustainable way forward after strict fishery management plans were put in place to help stocks recover.

“The machas have almost disappeared in Chile, except in this preservation area, where stocks have been taken care of for years,” said Franklin Zepada, president of the San Pedro Fisherman’s union in La Serena.

On nearby Coquimbo Bay, Zepada says the conservation programme and a quota system for catches has secured the livelihood of 175 local macha fishers, including 50 women.

A quota system of around 1,000 tons (907 tonnes) a season has bolstered prices, and the fishing community ensures that any clam less than 6cm in size is returned to the sea to mature.

Buried in the sand

Part of the clam’s raw appeal for consumers is the gritty fight to claim the bivalve from an icy Pacific in the austral winter. The technique is old and rustic. It’s a heart and soul, hands-and-feet kind of fishing. No rods, no nets, just pure hand-to-hand combat with ripping current and surf.

In San Pedro, groups of men and women “macheras” defy wind and tide to wade thigh deep into the icy seas of the austral winter, feeling for the bump of the shellfish in the sand with their bare feet, before reaching down and grappling under the water for the reclusive clam.

Being a good “machero” is all about experience.

“The macha fisherman must be in good physical shape to put up with that. He has to put on almost 10kg of lead to anchor himself to the sand and resist the waves so that the sea doesn’t move him around,” said Zepada.

“I’m 53 and since the age of 10 I’ve been catching machas. It’s dedication that makes everyone a good worker,” said Luis Castillo, before throwing the catch of the day on the beach on Coquimbo Bay.

Once out of the water, the machas are sent to a production centre managed by the fisherman’s cooperative, to be sorted for size and shipped to restaurants and stores.

Clams with cheese

A popular seafood dish in Chile is machas served baked in the half-shell with a coating of melted Parmesan cheese, along with a drizzle of white wine and lemon.

Invented by who else but an Italian immigrant, Machas a la Parmesana has become a classic of Chilean cuisine.

Conservationists warn that stocks will have to be carefully managed if such delicacies are to survive, however.

Found only on a stretch of Pacific coastline from southern Peru down to the Chilean island of Chiloe, the macha was almost wiped out by a devastating El Nino, which increased the temperature of the Pacific, in 1997 and 1998.

It recovered sufficiently in the following years to supply both the domestic and export market, but according to marine biologist Jaime Agusto, overfishing is a much more persistent foe than El Nino.

“If there continues to be a lot of fishing activity on the coast, not only will we lose the machas, but probably other species as well,” he said.

Agusto, who works on the San Pedro macha management plan, said unregulated macha fishing continues to be a problem because the ban is difficult to implement along such a lengthy stretch of coastline.

He said managers are trying to keep records of traditional macheros so that if and when stocks recover they will be the ones who benefit. – AFP Relaxnews