Thank cod it's coley... food critic Richard McComb enjoys a delicious taste of fish varieties condemned as 'discards'

Where would you expect to be served Mediterranean-style pan-fried dab, roast coley with shrimp butter and a fragrant curry made from whiting?

The answer, unfortunately, is: just about nowhere.

Except for today, that is. I am getting a taste of the future of fish through an innovative use of dinner-table favourites of the past. And I am getting it not at a high-end seaside restaurant but at a local chippie in the heart of land-locked Birmingham. Rock salmon and chips is on the menu, too – just for old time’s sake.

A special late lunch is being served at the Great British Eatery, just off the Hagley Road. The dishes have been specially prepared by Chris James, the restaurant/takeaway’s 18-year-old fryer-(and fish roaster)-in-chief to demonstrate what can be pulled off using the sort of unfashionable fish with which the seas around our islands teem.

Chris’s bosses, Conrad Brunton and Andy Insley, whose award-winning business has been open less than three years, are enthusiastic to sell fish species that all too often are neglected simply because they have fallen out of favour in an era dominated by cod. The ex-schoolmates are passionate supporters of the Fish Fight campaign headed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, which is calling for the “insane” practice of so-called discards to be banned.

It took the television chef to highlight the ludicrous workings of EU-backed regulations which effectively lead to about half of the fish caught in the North Sea being thrown back into the water as discards. The majority of the fish die.

Under the quota system, fishermen have to dump species that are too young, over fished or for which they do not have a quota. The problem arises because fishermen are unable to control the species caught in their nets in mixed fisheries. If they pick up over fished cod when they are trawling for haddock, they have to throw back all the cod, even if they are dead.

The same fate befalls perfectly tasty and nutritious but less popular fish such as flounder, dab, coley and pouting. They frequently become discards because the fishermen cannot find a market for them. In Scotland alone, it is thought fishermen chuck away £40 million worth of good fish. A system designed to protect threatened species has led to the nonsensical situation of a million tons of fish being thrown overboard by European fishermen.

In the wake of Fearnley-Whittingstall’s campaign, backed by celebrities such as Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais and Jamie Oliver, EU fisheries minister Maria Damanaki is now set to ban discards. An alternative system would allow all catches to be landed and counted against quota.

However, outlawing discards is one thing. Convincing consumers to try less fashionable species, the names of which would have been familiar to their grandparents, is something else and it is a challenge catering industry professionals, like the Great British Eatery (GBE), are keen to rise to.