A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
Scoff if you wish, but I like to eat fish for breakfast.
Among the rotating selections from the cupboard at dawn’s early light are pungent smoked kippers and crackers; piquant pickled herring on buttered rye bread; and on special occasions, lox with the requisite bagel, cream cheese and just a light sprinkling of capers. On special occasions, just for garnish, there’ll be a garlic-stuffed olive.
Yes, there are repercussions to such preferences. From nowhere, impatient cats find me as I’m walking down alleyways, and they make an eager, impromptu parade. Some mornings I get in a hurry, forget to brush my teeth, and inadvertently breathe on a prim, proper, crisply suited banker – and he wilts, as though beaned on the noggin by a stray aesthetic revelation.
If it doesn’t render the banker entirely unconscious, I’ll breathe on him a second time. That usually does it.
It’s clear: I like deceased marine life in the morning. Captain Crunch isn’t even close. Pop Tarts need not apply. Eggs will do, when pickled. Breakfast fish is real food for real people.
Obviously, these dining strategies are best complemented by stiff, aromatic black coffee, such as that produced through the saving grace of our home Saeco espresso maker. As side orders, just for balance amid the oil, vinegar and brine, properly bitter orange marmalade on toast and the occasional serving of Greek-style yogurt with fruit work quite well. Indeed, pungency settles the humors.
Until the pallid likes of Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel grasp the eternal wisdom of gustatory treats like these, it’s hard for me to take them seriously as contenders for my early morning dollars. May these franchised monuments to white bread, Velveeta and decaf never, ever besmirch the shining shores of Scandinavia, where so many years ago I learned to eat breakfast right.
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It was in Oslo, Norway, that I experienced pickled herring for the very first time, almost 30 years ago. Thanks to a tremendous, short-lived exchange rate in 1985, Scandinavia briefly became almost affordable, and when I stepped off the overnight train from Copenhagen to explore Oslo’s main station in search of a bite to eat, a handy restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet actually was reasonably priced.
For the budget traveler, buffets meant two or maybe even three meals, not just one. A clean freezer bag could be stuffed full of meat and cheese when no one was looking. I went for it, and during the course of gorging on the goodies, noticed three ceramic pots positioned behind the rest of the food.
My guess was jam, and with curiosity aroused, I removed the lid and reached for the spoon … which was a fork. It didn’t smell anything like fruit, and the funky aroma tickled my proboscis. I hadn’t ever eaten pickled herring, not once, but I knew what it was when the filet was impaled on the fork. It was love at first chew.
Later that week in Bergen, Norway, I treated myself to a culinary splurge. For three hours at lunchtime, a renowned local eatery ran an all-you-can eat seafood buffet for the equivalent of $15. Bearing in mind that my daily budget for lodging, meals and alcohol was $25, this was a budget-buster, but the fact that it has lingered in my memory three decades later attests to the correctness of the decision to abandon fiscal rectitude.
The buffet served as a rube’s introduction to smoked salmon, something quite rare in the rural, corn-fed Indiana of my youth. In 1985, I had no way of knowing the same-but-different confluences between Norwegian smoked salmon and Jewish lox (the latter cultural norms just as uncommon as Vikings in Baptist-laced Hoosierland), or the meticulous strategies for preparing such treats, which are every bit as traditional, proud and locally varied as American barbecue methodology.
I just liked it. A lot.
The summer of 1985 was a veritable appetizer, and an introduction to all things European. I was enamored of the continent, and have remained so these many years hence. Specifically, engaging in strange, subversive encounters with un-American methods of consuming fish became a thread running through subsequent journeys, from pie, mash eel and liquor (gravy) in London just last summer, ranging back to the snack tray at Suzanne’s wedding on the Baltic in 1996, which included a different species of eel, this time smoked.
But my single proudest moment came when I enjoyed the distinction of being the oddball foreigner who introduced my pals, the Copenhagen residents, to the grandeur of the Faergekro restaurant at Nyhavn (“new” harbor) in their own city.
The daily herring buffet is a highlight of western civilization. At least ten varieties of pickled herring (with sour cream, curry and Madeira sauce, among others) are offered, along with dense dark bread, butter, and garnishes like raw egg, onion and caper berry. Whole smoked herrings are carved from the bone and replenished.
Beer is available, as well as Akvavit (Scandinavian schnapps), with the wonderful northern custom of providing house-made infusions of herbs and spices for flavoring the firewater and washing down the tasty pickled and smoked morsels.
You can spend whole days in a joint like this, and one time in 1989, I did just that, starting a tab at Faergekro for lunch, and finally arriving back at my temporary Danish doorstep in a taxi, pea soup fog choking the street as well as the inner recesses of my cranium, fully tempted to join WC Fields in asking: “Was I here last night, and did I spend $300?”
(Whatever the words for “yes you did” are in Denmark)
That’s good. I thought I lost it!
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