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Growing up,
fish & chips was a meal that was heated on a baking pan. The
fish cutlet came from a box, the french fries from a plastic
bag. A hearty mix of mayonnaise, mustard and pickle relish
accompanied them. On occasion, tater tots could be substituted
for the french fries, but usually the tater tots merited their
own night and were matched with ketchup. We also ate the odd
plate of fish & chips at Long John Silver’s or an English-themed
pub, but it wasn’t a meal that excited the Lewis boys like a
trip to Wendy’s or the all-you-can-eat tostada counter at The
Sizzler.
When I moved
to England for a year in late 1994, my views on fish & chips
changed. I was living in a university house of residence,
subject to the whims of the hall’s catering staff, which usually
took this form:
----
Shot glass
of grapefruit juice
or
Cup of watery leek soup
----
White roll
or
Slice of white bread
----
Boiled meat
with boiled vegetables
or
Boiled fish with boiled vegetables
or
Boiled vegetable casserole
----
Rhubarb pie
in yellow sauce
or
Mummified apple
----
If the meat
dish happened to be something inedible—like if boiled fat was
substituted for boiled meat—I was out of luck because the
vegetarian option was solely for vegetarians or—on boiled pork
night—for practicing Muslims or Jews.
I hope I
don’t sound like a privileged, ungrateful lout. I ate all the
food I received, but I was playing for a water polo team and
needed a higher caloric intake than a small portion of boiled
meat and veggies provided. After dinner, I often would hoof it
to one of the many take-out restaurants that catered to the
still hungry students. The near-by options were limited to
cardboard pizza, a chippie (serving fish & chips), KFC and
Pakistani food. The Pakistani food was outstanding, but due to
high demand, it took a very long time to get served. I was
resolved not to eat at KFC, so in the first few weeks in
England, I usually chose between the chippie and the pizza
stand.
The chippie
was cheap. Three pounds—about five dollars—bought a mountain of
fries and what seemed to be an entire cod. The fish & chips
tasted good, but were so greasy that the paper holding them
leaked oil like a '79 Pinto. After eating, my face and hands
glistened and my stomach rumbled. It took three or four of
these meals for me to vow that, for the sake of my angry
stomach, my fish & chips days were over.
After about
five years, I lifted the ban, in part because of the book
The Basque History of the World, by Mark Kurlansky. It’s a
history of the Basque people, whose culture thrived, in part,
because of their intimacy with cod. I decided that what’s good
for the beret-wearing, jai-alai-playing, bull-fleeing,
New-World-exploring, whale-harpooning, O-blood-circulating,
Guggenheim-building, cod-salting Basques is good enough for me.
Kurlansky also wrote Cod: A Biography of the Fish That
Changed the World, but a read through that book would have
been preaching to the choir. I’d already vowed to eat the pale
flesh of the cod family more regularly.
I began my
new life respectably enough. At restaurants, I swapped steaks
or rack of lamb for grilled halibut, cod or sole. Occasionally,
though, when grilled fish wasn’t available, I settled for fish &
chips. At some point in the late 90s, I dropped fast food from
my diet and fish & chips became a ruse to trick my newly
health-conscious mind into accepting french fries. Even worse,
I’d always lap up all of the tartar sauce in the metal
cup-thingy. I convinced myself that the benefits of those omega
threes outweighed the grease, the mayo in the tartar sauce and
the mercury in the fish. I knew better, but soon I wasn’t
“settling for” fish & chips, I was craving them. It came down
to this: Me Want Fries. And also this: Tartar Sauce…Good.
I fight a
pitched battle with this desire for french fries. Our trip
through the Pacific Northwest presented a challenge because
seafood is the region’s culinary strength. Our friends from the
area and our travel literature were unified in their cry to eat
fish. I took this as a call to eat fish & chips.
After two
days in Washington, I concluded that there is not a substantial
difference between a portion of fish & chips in the Pacific
Northwest and, say, a batch of fish & chips at a Denny’s in
Albuquerque, particularly if your palette focuses on the fries
and tartar sauce. Feeling sheepish because I wasn’t making the
most out of my dining experience, I ordered halibut at expensive
restaurants on back-to-back nights. This created a new layer of
guilt because the $100 meals didn’t really fit into our
vaguely-defined trip budget.
The second
halibut meal—which included a side of fries and mayo—prompted me
to reevaluate my life and the role of the cod family in it, or
at the very least, in our trip. Fish & chips were out, as was
halibut if it cost over $12 a plate. In other words, no more
greasy foods and expensive restaurants. On the way home from
the second halibut meal, I broached the subject with my wife,
Lynn:
“We should
cut back on the number of times we go to restaurants. We should
eat more vegetables and I think we’re spending too much money on
food. How about if we stop by the organic market on Robeson St.
and get some more groceries?”
This was not
a bold statement, since I was basically reiterating her opinion
on the matter from an earlier conversation, when we decided to
eat out only once a day. Her response this time was obliging,
but lukewarm, “OK, but we’ve only been eating out once a day.
Do you really want to eat two meals a day in our room?”
I hadn’t
crunched the numbers. Two meals a day of crackers, cheese and
carrot sticks didn’t sound too good, especially if breakfast
consisted of bread, cheese and plums. Still, the memory of
dipping fries into mayonnaise, followed by paying a large tab,
made me zealous. I wanted Lynn to genuinely agree with me.
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea?!”, I said, and then
delivered what I thought would be the coup de gras: “We could
buy a crudités platter!”
Humoring me,
Lynn said without conviction, “That’s fine with me.”
I needed
validation through enthusiastic support, so I decided that now
was the time to make my french fry problem public: “Also, I’m
going to stop eating french fries. I’ve been eating too much
fish & chips. I’m going to stop ordering fish & chips.
Instead, we can eat meat and cheese and figs and nice bread.”
(I couldn’t think of the word charcuterie.) “And celery. We
could buy pre-cut celery.”
At the
organic market we purchased various charcuterie-type items,
fruit and a few snackable vegetables. We didn’t buy figs, but
to assuage the fish & chips guilt, I bought Rye-Crisps and three
pounds of non-fat organic fig bars. Yum.
The next
day, I ordered fries at a restaurant in Whistler. That’s just
plain sad. For dinner, my penance was rye-crisps.
The day
after that, we took a ferry that hopscotched between the Gulf
Islands—the Canadian equivalent of Washington’s San Juans. Our
destination was Saturna Island, a secluded artists’ colony off
the coast of Vancouver. We choose it because it was the least
touristy of the Gulf Islands, but it was perhaps a little too
far off the beaten track for a day trip. When we got off the
ferry, either a relative or friend greeted each of the dozen or
so fellow travelers who disembarked with us. They drove their
separate ways, leaving us standing alone in the tiny street with
four hours to kill.
We planned
to have a light lunch at the Saturna General Store, which
doubles as a café, and then take a walk to a sheltered cove near
the ferry dock. Our leisurely one and a half mile walk from the
dock to the café took about a half an hour, including time spent
photographing the yucca plants that belonged in Southern
California rather than Southern Canada. We had a nice, healthy
lunch. I ate a delicate Dungeness crab sandwich and Lynn had
spanikopita with a green salad. We split blueberry pie and the
bill came in under $30 Canadian. Factor in the walk and we had
a guilt-free lunch.
We still had
two and a half hours to kill, though. Saturna, according to
brochures, has plenty of sights to see, but it’s not conducive
to a short walking tour. Therefore, we stuck with our plan to
visit the sheltered cove near the dock. After about a
forty-five minute walk, we reached the cove, traipsed around in
the mud a bit, snapped a few pictures and considered our options
for the next hour and a half.
We probably
could have explored on foot some more or bribed a local into
giving us a kayak tour, but I have a deeply-ingrained need to be
early for public transportation, whether it’s a plane, bus or
ferry. If we missed the ferry, we would be stranded for the
night and probably would have to beg to spend the night in the
lobby of one of the B & Bs that we saw with “No Vacancy” signs.
Catching the ferry, therefore, was our top priority, so we
headed back to the dock, where we hoped to wait out the
remaining time while sipping on iced tea at the dockside pub.
I’ve never
felt comfortable in the café culture that allows you to buy one
drink and sit for hours at a table. I start feeling bad for the
proprietor or worry that another patron may sit down at my table
and demand to discuss Derrida or make me listen to Yo La Tengo
on her iPod. In the past, when serving as a designated driver,
this unease led me to order one soda after another—with a pint
of orange juice now and then for variety—because I need a glass
in my hand to prevent feeling like a loiterer. Also, I could
avoid uncomfortable small talk with strangers by staring at the
ice, seemingly contemplating its “iceness.”
Anyway, this
mindset afflicted me at the dockside pub. When I ordered our
drinks, the bartender was gruff, which reinforced my need to
order something else after I finished my syrupy iced tea. After
half an hour of swirling the straw in the dregs, I felt
compelled to buy the $3.00 cup of minestrone soup. At a bar,
nothing fulfills my need to be a customer better than ordering
food, even if it’s just a cup of soup.
It is
pointless, though, to attempt to order minestrone soup in an
understaffed bar on a secluded island in a country founded by
the English. A pub with beer-themed lights over its pool table
and one food preparer generally serves one type of soup:
canned. Minestrone is a solid, sometimes spectacular soup when
prepared with inspiration. From a can, it is a slap in the face
of Botticelli, Garibaldi, Ferragamo and the rest of Italian
culture.
As I waited
my turn to order, I began having second thoughts about the
minestrone and searched the photocopied menu stapled to a nearby
post for a better option. Clam chowder certainly wasn’t
better. Nor was chicken salad. A retiree jabbered on to the
barmaid about how she’d heard “great things” about the pub’s
fish & chips. The barmaid merely grunted, which I should have
taken as a sign of caution, and turned to take my order. The
barmaid raised her eyebrows expectantly while I searched the
menu vainly one last time, trying to push the thought of “great
things” out of my mind. I wilted under the pressure.
When I
returned to the table and couldn’t look my wife in the eye, she
knew.
Copyright Jeff Lewis, 2004. |
