Fish from the farm
The Australians, as we know, are not afraid to get stuck in. So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to fish and chips, they choose to batter and fry something considerably more challenging than cod.
The barramundi is, quite frankly, an ill-tempered and unpleasant beast. In the wild, full-grown specimens - of which there are mercifully few, thanks to a predisposition towards cannibalism which sees off most of them at tiddler size - can reach sharklike proportions, with teeth to match.
Unfortunately for the barramundi, but fortunately for the Australians, the fish taste much better than they look. Fried, grilled, roasted or barbecued, served up in a fancy sauce, coated in batter or just cooked simply with a few spices, barramundi is a wonderfully adaptable ingredient.
Which explains why, over the past year or so, visitors to pubs in Hampshire and further afield will have spotted something called New Forest barramundi increasingly turning up on menus and specials boards.
Fortunately for our indigenous species, the barramundi are not living wild in the forest - although they'd probably have a fair crack at it, given the chance - but come from an industrial unit just outside Lymington.
Recognising the pressure on traditional white fish stocks such as cod and haddock, in 2004 a group of entrepreneurs with a background in the foodservice business decided to start farming barramundi.
The company, Aquabella Group, has converted a 5,500 sq m former pizza factory into an indoor fish farm. Spearheading the development of the business have been managing director Campbell Mitchell and director of operations Knut Sandbakken, a Norwegian specialist in fish farming.
Although not without its teething troubles - a word chosen advisedly, given the fishes' propensity to bite chunks out of each other if different-sized specimens are kept in the same tank - the business has grown successfully.
The fish are hatched in Israel - a global centre of fish breeding, as it turns out - and arrive in Lymington just a few millimetres long. They reach ideal fillet size at about nine months old, at which point they are processed on site and sold through specialist wholesalers such as M&J Seafood.
"We recycle more than 97 per cent of the water we use here," says Knut. "The system is monitored by computer to ensure the fish are never distressed."
Campbell adds: "New Forest Barramundi may be growing an Australian fish using Norwegian technology but we are determined to be a local company contributing to the New Forest community."
That commitment has earned the company the New Forest Marque for sustainability. It has also joined the Hampshire Fare local produce group. Campbell is now moving into the chairman's seat, handing over the managing director role to Robert Smith to oversee the next stage of growth, which includes plans to expand the Lymington site.
At the White Buck in Burley, Hampshire, manager Chris Bailey served New Forest Barramundi over the summer from the Fuller's pub's specials board, and is continuing to offer the fish as an occasional special through the winter.
"Customers really enjoy it," he says. "The great thing is that barramundi is so versatile you can serve it in different ways to keep it interesting."
The story of the local fish farm also gives the pub a great tale to spin for customers interested in the provenance of Hampshire's own exotic fish. But of course, you should have seen the one that got away…
