Earth Day offers a moment to reflect on the choices behind every plate at Faber. Rather than grand gestures, our approach is built on daily decisions — from refusing tuna, salmon and trawler-caught fish, to working exclusively with British day boat seafood. Alongside renewable energy kitchens, waste-to-energy systems and oysters that actively restore marine ecosystems, it is a considered, evolving way of cooking that looks to tread more lightly on the world around us.

Recent decisions by retailers to remove mackerel from sale have highlighted concerns around how the wider fishery is managed. Yet when caught by small coastal day boats using traditional hook-and-line methods, mackerel remains one of the most sustainable fish in British waters, which is why it continues to have a place on our menu.

For centuries it was one of the great staples of the Thames and the estuaries of England. Londoners ate eel in pies, stews and jellied form, often bought from small street stalls that served the city’s dock workers, traders and labourers. It was local, abundant and deeply tied to the rivers that flowed through the country. Today eel carries a different reputation.