o say that I am crap in the morning is to say nothing. All too oft, it takes about two hours for a huge mug of coffee, a handful of Chinese herbal pills, a round of Kundalini breathing exercises, an invigorating contrast shower and upbeat music throughout the commute to yank me out of lethargy into some semblance of functioning humanity.
It sure takes a promise of something really special to get me up at 3AM and drag my vehemently uncooperative body across dark and cold London. This time it was the perspective of a sightseeing session that worked the miracle. My group mate Tom used to work for an Italian restaurant and Billingsgate Market is where they used to buy fresh pesci spada and gambas and he promised us a tour. Nice.
Being the wholesale fish and seafood market of the capital of the country that has only recently started shedding its ichthyophobia, Billingsgate is sure not Tokyo's Tsukiji Market. A lot of the produce that will later be featured on the menus as "fresh catch of the day" is in fact hauled in refrigerator trucks. Well, how else then would you ship anything fresh from the tropical expanses of the Indian Ocean to a cloudy island in the North Sea?
At any rate, the choice is incomparably larger than the pathetic hike and pollock of my childhood's fish shops. The high turnover makes sure that the gifts of the sea are affordable to the gluttonous masses in the Big Smoke.
Speaking of prices, they are not that much lower than at my Brixton Market fishmongers, so a couple of quid difference is definitely not worth the tribulations of an hour-and-half night bus trip.
A lot can be said by the food cooked in the market. Grilled seafood in Barcelona's La Boqueria Market was superlative. The only ocean-derived item we found in Billingsgate Market's café was this grilled scallop bagel with bacon and cheese. It tasted just the way it looked.
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it says so much about a country's culture that it's biggest fish market (and most successful, and - I'm told - most sustainably minded) sells fried eggs with chips for breakfast. if you MUST have fish you could pick kippers of that a bony and overly-salted variety, that your eyes will water.
ReplyDeleteI have been to the market a few times. Last time, quite luckily for work, so the Fish school that is situated above the market, took us around, introduced to lots of traders and (!) cooked us a delicious brekki of high-quality, fresh kippers with thick slices of white bread. now THAT was worth trekking down London at 5am.