- Title: The cool new thing in French haute cuisine? Madagascar caviar
- Date: 23rd September 2019
- Summary: LAKE MANTASOA, MADAGASCAR (RECENT - SEPTEMBER 10, 2019) (REUTERS) MALAGASY EMPLOYEE ON A BOAT TALKING TO LAND SITE OPERATION MANAGER, PHILIPPINE PASTIER AND CAGE SITE OPERATION MANAGER, JEROME BASTIDE JEROME AND ONE MALAGASY EMPLOYEE ON THE BOAT CHATTING PHILIPPINE ON THE BOAT BOAT ARRIVING NEAR STURGEON FARM CAGE IN STURGEON FARM
- Embargoed: 7th October 2019 10:27
- Keywords: caviar madagascar lake mantasao sturgeon luxury gastronomy fine dining
- Location: ANTANANATRIVO, LAKE MANTASOA, MADAGASCAR / PARIS, FRANCE
- City: ANTANANATRIVO, LAKE MANTASOA, MADAGASCAR / PARIS, FRANCE
- Country: Various
- Topics: Living / Lifestyle,Society/Social Issues,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA003AXVPAHJ
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Floating sturgeon laboratories are common in Russia or Iran, but this is Lake Mantasoa, a hydropower reservoir in the highlands of Madagascar at an altitude of 1,400m. It is Africa's first and only caviar farm.
Jerome Bastide slides an ultrasound wand over the sturgeon's underbelly, before a swift biopsy extracts a dozen eggs and he returns the fish to the lake.
"So here we have 2.6-2.7, so it's perfect for caviar, we're checking the texture, we feel there is a certain resistance to it, it means we can transform it so that will go for caviar," he says.
With the world's fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition, Madagascar is an unlikely source for a luxury food that fetches upwards of 700 euros ($773.78) per kilogram in plush French restaurants.
But Mantasoa's cool fresh water and inexpensive labour inspired three French entrepreneurs to set up Acipenser in 2009, importing their first batch of fertilised sturgeon eggs from France four years later.
Now they produce Rova Caviar with 300 tonnes of fish from 6 different sturgeon species. 250 tonnes in their lake cages and 50 tonnes in their basins on land. They even produce their own fish food.
"So the feeding is done with food made in Rova Caviar, it's made in our own company, made with 90% local ingredients to try and limit our carbon footprint, we are really careful with that. It's a recipe that we've made ourselves and it functions very well given the growth we have are having (of the fish)," says Acipenser's Land Site Operation Manager, Philippine Pastier
A short drive from the lake lie the hatching ponds and processing factory, a featureless building where employees in head-to-toe sterile white protective clothing work in a chilled, spotless interior.
Inside, a four-foot sturgeon is heaved onto a stainless steel gurney. One worker slices it open while another carefully removes caviar for cleaning, sifting and salting. Each fish produces a pile of dark grey, brown or black eggs.
Discoloured eggs are removed with tweezers, salt is added and the final product decanted into cans to ripen. Around six months later the precious granules are repackaged for export.
Outside the factory a row of 19 rectangular hatching ponds lie side by side like a barcode.
Beneath the grey-green waters in two of the ponds are dozens of highly-prized beluga sturgeon which, which will start to mature in 2026.
Acipenser employs between 250 and 300 locals, depending on the season. It produced its first batch in 2017.
Local employees never imagined to work in the caviar industry one day.
"When I finished studying I didn't think I would work in the caviar industry, at best I thought I would work with shrimps or flagship products from Madagascar and now I'm working on something that is unique in Madagascar but also in Africa, I'm very proud," says Acipenser Assistant Cage Site Manager, Aina Rakotoarimalala.
The CEO of Rova Caviar Delphyne Dabezies admits they were relieved once they managed to produce their first batch of caviar.
"The day we produced the first caviar in Madagascar was a real relief because in the southern hemisphere, as I said, there are few farms. The second point is that no one had tried the experiment before, to produce sturgeons in Madagascar, we could have had a bad caviar, we were not sure. So when we saw that the product was excellent and that Malagasy terroir really managed to transmit this level of excellence into the product, it was a great relief," she says.
Lalaina Ravelomanana, head chef at Marais, a glitzy rooftop restaurant in Madagascar's capital Antananarivo, is a close friend of Delphyne Dabezies and her partners. He takes great pride in serving local caviar.
"What's particular with this caviar it is very subtle in the mouth, buttery, and it will combine well with products from Madagascar like seafood," he says, plating up six of his own caviar recipes replete with vodka jelly, maize cream, artistic smears of sauce, fumes of smoked cocoa and edible flowers.
He started using the caviar a year ago and has already invented 60 recipes.
"They all thought we were crazy, even our closest friends said "Ridiculous, caviar in Madagascar - what's next, salmon in the desert?" A Lot of them laughed. But we've proved that it works very well," adds Dabezies.
This year the company will produce almost five metric tonnes for export - mostly to France, but also the United States and Reunion island.
Dabezies hopes to double production in the next five years as Acipenser introduces caviar from their six varieties of sturgeon. Last week the company launched an online shop and started providing Rova Caviar to the soon to open Imperial Treasure Restaurant in the French capital.
"There's an exotic feel, a different note, it's about making yourself stand out among chefs already working on the Paris market, we're completely new, so we need to find catchy elements. The fact that caviar Rova comes from Madagascar, we already bring an exotic feel with the Chinese culture, and the fact that it (the caviar) comes from Madagascar, it's an extra touch," says Romain Forest, room manager at the Imperial Treasure
The global caviar market is projected to grow at 7% per year to around $560 million by 2025, said Adroit Market Research, an India-based business analytics and consulting company.
(Christophe Van Der Perre, Clotaire Achi, Estelle Ndjandjo, Kathryn Carlson, Emilie Delwarde) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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