Fish Bar Blog

Staff Outing - GoApe, Aberfoyle
7th July 2008	Submitted By: Alison Smith
It’s not all hard work at Anstruther Fish Bar – we have regular outings and various team building activities involving our staff, which all go towards building on staff morale and basically making working here fun! A highlight this year was a day’s skiing at Glenshee for 12 of us (including 4 complete beginners). Scotland has some amazing skiing given the ideal conditions and this winter was no exception. Unfortunately we can’t all go on these outings at the one time! So, 6 of our intrepid staff recently decided to try out the adventure experience GoApe in Aberfoyle. This was not for those who suffer from vertigo, midge attacks or car sickness! After a 3 hour journey (courtesy of Jeff’s Sat Nav) we finally arrived, a bit late, at GoApe, a bit unsure of what to expect. Well, after a half hour formal training on which harness goes where and what to do in the event of a fall, we entered the forest by way of the longest aerial zip wire in the UK. And we thought that was scary? This was quite an adrenaline rush and we can’t recommend it highly enough so, once it gets a bit quieter at work and we have a bit more time, we shall be organising bigger groups to experience GoApe too. www.goape.co.uk
French TV Visit
2nd July 2008	Submitted By: Alison Smith
It’s visits like these that make this job so much fun – just ask our staff. Last Thursday saw French TV chef Julie Andrieu (apparently the French equivalent of Gordon Ramsay!) and her film crew arrive at The Fish Bar to make a documentary for Channel France5 programme ‘Fourchette et Sac à Dos’ which, basically translates as ‘fork and rucksack’! This series travels the world looking for small independent restaurants/dining experiences that specialise in fresh local produce that is sourced sustainably.So I guess we must have ticked all the right boxes and were honoured to be chosen to take part in this programme. Filming began early morning (6.30am) with our manager Paul buying our fish on Peterhead market. Cameras then followed that day’s haddock down the road to our small processing company, Argofish, in nearby StMonans where they filmed Paul, Steve, Neale and Christopher hand filleting the fish ready for the first delivery to the Fish Bar in time for opening! With the introduction of fish skinning and fish filleting machines in the processing industry nowadays, we still firmly believe that hand filleting in this traditional way produces a higher quality fillet that can almost always be guaranteed boneless. Julie was also intrigued by our smokehouse where the brined haddock are simply hung above a pile of wood shavings and left to smoke away for a few hours and told us she couldn’t wait to taste some later on. These methods have become part of a dying trade here in the East Neuk of Fife with only a few of these highly sought after craftsmen still operating in this traditional way. On to the Fish Bar and already it was starting to get a bit too busy to keep our top restaurant tables empty for the assembled film crew and their assistants. However our customers didn’t appear to mind waiting as they were informed that they may feature on French TV! Everything went smoothly and I suppose Robert and I needn’t have worried unduly about our interviews as they will either have sub-titles or be overdubbed in French! The finished programme goes out in August and we hope to have a link to it on this website by then.
The Launch
1st July 2008	Submitted By: Alison Smith
Well here at last is the start of our long awaited Fish Bar Blog! We have had so many requests, from people in our industry and from customers alike, to share the day to day happenings at Anstruther Fish Bar on our website. So this new blog will give us and our family the opportunity to share with you our views on current fishing industry issues, chip shop industry information as well as the general day to day occurrences at the Fish Bar. There’s never a dull moment here, especially now that the busy tourist season has kicked off. I just hope we can find the time to add these blogs on a regular basis!