I was in Fillmore,
California, a little way inland from Ventura, and I’d eaten some potato skins
(above) at a sports bar named Central Station, and afterwards we wandered down
to an antique store that had a great selection of paper items, menus and postcards,
including this one of a Manx kipper, sent from Douglas in the Isle of Man, to a
Mrs. F. L. Peavey in Chicago, on August 10th 1907.
As I’ve said
elsewhere, I think there’s nothing better than a good kipper when you’re in the
mood, and Alan Davidson, one of my favorite food writers, called one of his
books A Kipper With My Tea. In the title essay Davidson is extremely
snippy about the vinegar bore and the olive oil bore but insists that “without
becoming a kipper-bore ... one can exercise a certain discrimination.” He says that he’s particularly fond of the
kippers made by the Robson family in Craster, in Northumberland.
He writes, “We
certainly enjoyed the Craster kippers, but what really held our attention there
was an extraordinarily cheap piece of real estate. Perched high on the cliff,
looking over the tiny harbor and the North Sea – a really amazing view - was a
small cottage going for a song. When we
heard about the song we started having fantasies about a second home in
Craster, writing inspired by the view, kippers every day, and so on. But then a neighbor enlightened us. The cottage had been part of the kippering
complex and its stone walls were so deeply impregnated with herring oil that
that no known technique could remove the overpowering smell.”
I can see why you
mightn’t buy a place like that, but I reckon I can think of worse food smells.
The
Robson family is still very much in the kipper business. There website is here: http://www.kipper.co.uk
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