Chefs

What Chef Matt Kirkley Did With His New Fish Tanks at L2O

Abalone at L2O.
Abalone at L2O. Photo: Anjali Pinto, courtesy The Huffington Post.

A few months back we linked L2O chef Matthew Kirkley’s blog post about the fish tanks he had under construction at L2O, with the intention of being able to offer much fresher and pristine seafood, particularly of species that inevitably deteriorate as they’re shipped, even overnight. A commenter raised the question, so how was this any different from what lots of, say, Chinese restaurants already do, with a tank full of lobsters? It wasn’t, except in the care with which it was done, which is to say, in the little things that make all the difference in the world. That’s what we get, anyway, from an article in the Huffington Post which talks about how the now-completed tanks are being used:

They decided to create one big chamber that would be partitioned into two tanks and two separate systems. The tanks would live at different salinity levels – one mimicking the British Channel and one closer to the California/Oregon coast. The water around the British Isles tends to be quite shallow, with a lot of cold water pushing into it. That’s where you find great turbot and dover sole, among other fish. For now, Kirkley has blue lobsters from Scotland in the British Channel tank. In the Pacific tank, the abalone from The Abalone Farm in California have been doing well enough that he’s ready to introduce geoduck soon.

There’s also a cool slideshow of a few of the species already living in the tank, like the abalone shown above. [HuffPo]

What Chef Matt Kirkley Did With His New Fish Tanks at L2O