Selling a green image along with fish and chips

Two weeks before the opening of his first fish-and-chip shop, noted London chef Tom Aikens is looking relaxed.

Once better known for his hot temper than his brilliant cooking, Aikens embraces colleagues and jokes with his receptionist as he arrives at Tom’s Kitchen, the casual eatery he started last year near his fine-dining restaurant in Chelsea.

Tom’s Place, scheduled to open Oct. 29, will serve fish from sustainable stocks on tables manufactured from recycled plastic. Customers will use Vegware cutlery made of natural starch and fibers. In case the green message doesn’t get through, there will be leaflets and displays about suppliers and the environment.

“I’ve always wanted to do something with fish,” Aikens, 37, said in an interview. “Fish and chips is the last fast-food business that hasn’t been modified. It’s been around since the early 1800s. That’s a long time, and it’s hardly changed at all. I want to help take it to a new level of sustainability.”

Instead of the usual cod and chips, Aikens will use pollock for his basic dish. Other fish may include megrim sole and coley, as well as Norwegian cod. Grills will feature Cornish mackerel, sardines and line-caught sea bass and there will be moules mariniere, bouillabaisse and cockles.

“It’s trying to get people out of the mind-set of what they always expect in a fish-and-chip shop and giving them information about the fish we’re using,” he said. “I’ve tried a whole host of different fishes, and I’ve chosen the nicest of the bunch.”

Aikens says he is working with various environmental groups, including the Environmental Justice Foundation, the Seafood Alliance and the Marine Stewardship Council. Much of his fish will come from Andrew Pascoe, a fisherman in Newlyn, Cornwall, who this year was profiled in the Ecologist magazine under the headline “Local Hero.”

The potatoes will be Maris Piper, from Worth’s Farm in Deeping St Nicholas, Lincolnshire. Aikens said he chose this variety because of something called “dry matter,” and then he gave a detailed explanation of what this means. It’s basically the starch, which gives chips their taste and color; potatoes also need the right water content for fluffiness.

“In a traditional fish-and-chip shop, the chips come from a bog-standard supplier and they chip the potatoes and you’ll get all the little off-cuts as well,” he said.

“We’ll get the potatoes direct from the farm and we’ll take out all the little bits, so you are left with nice, baton-shaped chips. It means all the chips are cooked evenly,” he said. “We’re making our own homemade batter, whereas most fish-and-chip shops use a powdered, dry batter.”

The batter will be made with high-gluten bread flour, corn flour, sugar, salt, white pepper and yeast, together with a 50-50 mix of Heineken and sparkling water. Having tasted about half a dozen oils, Aikens chose beef drippings for frying. The wine list will be entirely English, and there will be British ales.

Aikens, who holds a Michelin star for his fine-dining Tom Aikens restaurant, isn’t the first London chef to take fish and chips up market. Garry Hollihead opened Geales, in Notting Hill, in May, with a menu that included roast sea scallops with warm orange dressing. Gordon Ramsay had monkfish and chips on the menu when he opened his first pub, the Narrow, at Limehouse, in March.

Tom’s Kitchen has been a runaway success, Aikens said. He says it served a record 443 customers Oct. 5, and he is looking at a site in a new building in the City financial district in London, which might open in 2009. He may also open more branches of Tom’s Place.

For all his achievements, some people still think of Aikens as the angry young chef who lost his job at Pied a Terre, then was in the headlines for an altercation with a diner he accused of stealing a spoon.

He now exudes calm, joking with staff and happily posing for photographs. This summer, Aikens married Amber Nuttall, who works for Planet Hollywood founder Robert Earl as business development manager at the exclusive members club Fifty London. Aikens is as likely to show up in fashion magazines and in gossip columns as on the food pages.

“I’ve got a beautiful wife and I’m just more relaxed,” he said. “I’m happy now.”