Restaurateurs launch global fundraising drive to help Syrian refugees

A chef has found an original way of helping displaced Syrians

Melinda McRostie has been feeding refugees at her Lesbos restaurant, The Captain’s Table

In many respects, restaurateurs Jim Cowie and Melinda McRostie have little in common – one lives on the cold northern coast of Scotland, the other on a Greek island.

But an apparently trivial connection – Mr Cowie runs the Captain’s Galley in Scrabster, Caithness, while Ms McRostie owns The Captain’s Table on Lesbos – and a shared concern for the plight of refugees fleeing Syria’s brutal civil war has given rise to a most unlikely global fundraising drive.

As hundreds of thousands of people poured through the northern port of Molyvos within sight of the harbourside Captain’s Table, Ms McRostie, originally from Australia, was moved to take action, providing food, blankets and other essentials to people who had survived the short but treacherous crossing from Turkey. She even set up her own refugee camp on land beside the restaurant and a charity, the Starfish Foundation, to raise funds for the relief effort.

More than 3,000 miles away in Scotland, Mr Cowie heard the story from a family friend in Canada, Karen Connolly, who happened also to be a friend of Ms McRostie. Although Mr Cowie has never met Ms McRostie and has never even spoken to her, he was so awed by what she was doing and the strength of the connection he felt because of their restaurants’ similar names that he felt he had to do something.

And now he is writing to every restaurant in the world with Captain in its name to ask them to host a special charity event in honour of The Captain’s Table on Lesbos and the Starfish Foundation.

“I just feel I’m in such such a privileged position. I’d love to be able to help them [at The Captain’s Table]. Their lives have been 100 per cent turned on its head,” he said. “I wanted to see if we could raise the maximum to help the refugees. I’d like us all to link up and do some theme nights.

“I’ve emailed 24 Captain’s Galleys and three Captain’s Tables and I’m adding more as I go. I’m explaining about the foundation and the people they’re helping, and just ask each person to do something.”

Because February is so quiet for Mr Cowie, he is waiting to get some responses before he holds an event at his own place. “We’re going to have Starfish as our preferred charity. But it needs more than just a wee collection box for loose change. It might end up with an auction night. We’ll see,” he said.

As restaurant names go, Captain’s Galley might seem unoriginal, even hackneyed. But it was special to Mr Cowie, a former fisherman. When he was considering a name for the business, his thoughts turned to an old family favourite from Florida holidays past called, yes, Captain’s Galley. And for 14 years, one dish has provided him with a daily reminder of that original American incarnation.

Blackened saithe is his version of the cajun-spiced blackened grouper he would order every time his family visited Captain’s Galley in Fort Pierce. It was a dish chosen because of his love of the food there but also his commitment to sustainability – all the fish he serves comes from 50 miles of Britain’s most northerly mainland port. It helped him to win the top prize in the 2015 Sustainable Restaurant Awards.

“With the amount of fish landed in Scrabster, I never wanted to fly grouper halfway round the world. Saithe, which the Irish call black pollock, ticks every sustainable box. It handles the hot cooking with the spice,” he said.

In years gone by, The Captain’s Table would normally close in the winter. But this season it has remained open to feed the large number of volunteers who are helping to deal with the exodus. More than 500,000 refugees and migrants passed through of Lesbos last year.

Ms McRostie described how she would receive calls from overwhelmed port police, begging for her help. “There they were, right in front of us. What do you do? You help,” she said. “The main thing is they’re freezing cold. We give them emergency blankets, if the port police haven’t, and sandwiches. The real problem is shoes; we never have enough.”

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