Carmine Marletta, Executive Chef at the InterContinental The Barclay New York
“I’m in bed with the CleanFish Alliance!” Carmine is telling me, in his tiny, cluttered office just off the kitchen of The Barclay New York hotel. “You gotta taste this!” The chef, who keeps a closely cropped, skinny goatee and is wearing a monogrammed white cook’s tunic, hands me a small dish of shrimp cooked with English peas, peppers, and Thai chili sauce. I taste a few, and they are sublime—fresh and tender. “Is that sweet or what?” he asks, with a triumphant grin.
But it’s not just the flavor that Carmine finds thrilling. He has now pulled out a folder full of pamphlets about his suppliers, most of whom, as of a month or so ago, are “sustainable.” The fruits and vegetables they sell are organic, the meat and poultry haven’t been pumped up with hormones and antibiotics, and, in the case of the shrimp I have just tasted, the seafood is sustainably fished. (There is a whole movement around sustainable food; you can read about it on change.org). Carmine is leaning forward in his swivel chair, pointing out a document that he has highlighted with a yellow magic marker: according to CleanFish, these shrimp have been raised in an inland, closed-loop aquaculture system that “leaves nearby coastlines and mangroves untouched.”
Not that long ago, this New Jersey boy knew nothing of sustainable fishing techniques and saving the environment. Carmine Marletta grew up working at his parent’s pizzeria, making sauce, cleaning pots, bussing tables. His parents came to the US in 1955, leaving behind their olive-growing roots in Naples; his mother went only through the eighth grade, then quit school to start working. To this day, Carmine says, she doesn’t speak good English.
Carmine always loved to cook, and he helped develop a more sophisticated menu at the pizzeria—“it was one of the top 10 restaurants in Jersey!” he says—before heading for Manhattan to find his fortune. He started as a sous-chef at the Peninsula Hotel, then worked his way up through various hotels, becoming Executive Chef at The Barclay in 2005.
But despite professional success, “I was doin’ terrible in life—anxious, depressed, and overweight,” Carmine remembers. Incredibly, he managed to lose 93 pounds, but still didn’t feel right. Then he started eating organic foods, and his life changed. “I felt incredible energy,” Carmine remembers, “just great.”
Fast forward to 2009, and along comes Herve Houdre, The Barclay’s new general manager, who has launched a sustainable revolution in the grand old hotel. (Fascinated by the idea of a traditional old hotel going green from top to bottom, I am following that revolution in these blog posts over an entire year.) Houdre’s mantra is the “triple bottom line," and I guarantee he will tell you about his commitment to “planet, people, and profits” within the first 20 minutes of any conversation. The idea is that business can—and should—help the environment and people, even as it makes profits. “Oh, man, we just clicked,” Carmine tells me. “I realized I could bring what I was doing in my personal life into the hotel!”
So back to the CleanFish Alliance and Carmine’s delicious shrimp. It turns out the specimen I have just tasted is called Laughing Bird Caribbean White Shrimp, which, according to CleanFish propaganda, is a “sustainable, delicious, and exceedingly fresh alternative to rock shrimp.” Clean Fish, I learn, is a coalition of “artisan fisheries” that help protect the environment. The seafood supplier goes on to say in his sales material that these shrimp not only have no antibiotics, no hormones, or sodium bisulphate; they are “humanely harvested in an ice and water bath."
I have to admit that I have never worried a lot about humanity when it comes to shrimp. But I point out to Carmine that in supporting this seafood supplier (whose prices, by the way, are cheaper than regular suppliers—“they need the business,” Carmine says), he is helping to develop a whole new market based on sustainability. (Next week, I’m going to talk to Clean Fish Alliance, to learn about how Carmine is affecting its business.) “We are playing our role in changing the world,” Carmine says with a shrug and a grin. “We could close the door and make it go away, but the fact of the matter is that people are more health conscious.” With that, Carmine gives me a big, Italian hug, and I head up to the housekeeping department to talk about the business of bamboo sheets.
Previous Posts on Operation Green Hotel
Should You Accept This Mission...Make a Grand Dame Green (Jan. 6, 2010)
Change the Lightbulbs! (Jan. 8, 2010)
Rallying the Troops—Chefs, Maids, and All (Jan.14, 2010)
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