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Seafood

Riverside Serves
Seafood Sustainably

Dining Services at the University of California, Riverside believes in
serving sustainable seafood whenever possible — and students on
campus love it.
“Seafood flies,” said Burke Reeves, executive chef for UC Riverside
Residential Dining & Food Trucks. “When we put out salmon, tuna, ahi or
any other sustainable fish that we use, it flies. The students love it.”

Serving sustainable seafood fits in with the school’s involvement in Menus
of Change: The Business of Healthy, Sustainable, Delicious Food Choices,
a ground-breaking initiative from The Culinary Institute of America (CIA)
and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health that works to create a
long-term, practical vision for the integration of optimal nutrition and public
health, environmental stewardship and restoration, and social responsibility
concerns within the foodservice sector and beyond.

“We are trying to follow those principles and really, of course, make that
delicious turn for some of those sustainable and healthy items,” he said. “We
already had that in us, but it was, ‘How are we going to launch this?’ When
the Menus of Change initiative came along, we got truly excited. That was
one of the reasons.”

Not only is the program serving sustainable seafood, but it also tries to
serve some species that are not being used by everyone. “We have a mantra
to find those fish proteins that aren’t on the most popular lists,” said Michael
Neener, general manager, A – I Residential Dining and UCR Food Trucks,
Concessions and C/stores. “We are using those, and finding very unique ways
to present them as entrées or as appetizers. In the residential restaurants, we
certainly sell much of our fish as an entrée. We definitely doctor it up and
make all sorts of great flavors with it.”

Reeves had this philosophy even before he arrived on campus. “I have a
fine dining background, and I really respect some great chefs — of course,
Thomas Keller and Alice Waters. When I was running restaurants, we had
these practices a long time ago. I have always had that philosophy because
this is my passion. A chef is like an artist with a paintbrush. If you have the
greatest artist, they know how to use their tools. The plate, when it comes
to food, it is like my canvas. I really appreciate food, and that is why this
is just perfect.”

Neener added, “It is just the right thing to do. It also allows our chefs
to have that creative edge to them where they can take something that they

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