Holy smoke!
Are much-derided kippers the new avocado on toast? Emma Hughes finds out
MAX BERGIUS is holding a pair of kippers aloft. ‘Here they are, the quintessentially British breakfast,’ he beams, brandishing them triumphantly like the spoils of war. It’s early on a Wednesday morning and we’re under a railway arch in east London—home to Secret Smokehouse, which he founded in 2016. Alongside the sides of salmon being carefully pin-boned by his team are sleek and silvery herrings fresh out of the water. ‘We take big, beautiful, chunky ones, remove the guts and gills, hand-split and fillet them and then smoke them over oak sawdust,’ Mr Bergius explains. According to him, they have ‘a lovely, delicate flavour’— which might come as news to anyone who came of age pushing them around their plate.
For much of the 20th century, smoked herrings were a superior way to start the day: inexpensive, plentiful and nutritious. ‘It was with a merry cry that I greeted Jeeves as he brought in the coffee and kippers,’ says Bertie Wooster in 1946’s Joy in the Morning, speaking for the tens of thousands of Britons who breakfasted on fish landed off the Isle of Man, Northumbria (the ‘kippering’ process was formalised here in 1843),
Scotland’s west coast or North Yorkshire. They always evoked strong feelings: in the early 1970s, Laurence Olivier was apoplectic when the Brighton Belle that ran between London and the coast threatened to stop serving them in its dining car (the kippers stayed, but the train was decommissioned in 1972; there’s a moral in there somewhere).
Within a matter of years, kippers had virtually disappeared from breakfast tables. The rise of open-plan kitchens had something to do with it—not being able to close the door on the distinctive waft from the pan doesn’t help—as did the decline in people smoking at home (which had the side-effect of masking other strong smells) and the increasing popularity of ‘healthy’ sweet options, such as cereal and yogurt.
More than anything, kippers were a victim of their own success. Although they’re now on the Marine Conservation Society’s approved list of sustainable fish, overfishing after the Second World War led to a serious thinning of stocks. The result was the inferior specimens that blighted school dining halls (in 1993’s Stand Before Your God, his memoir of attending the Dragon School and Eton, American writer Paul
Watkins remembers dropping them into his blazer pocket so he could throw them into the road and wait for a truck to run them over) and the supermarket vacuum packs of yellow-dyed, intensively produced fish that repeat on you for hours. In her book Good Things, Jane Grigson describes this commercialisation of the once-proud kipper industry as ‘a minor national disgrace’.
Not long after Boris Johnson waved some around during his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party earlier this year, however, Nigella Lawson posted a picture on Instagram of a pair at Marylebone’s La Fromagerie, in place of the more usual avocado on toast. Suddenly, kippers seemed to be everywhere—and being enjoyed by a younger demographic, too. Online Cornish fishmonger Wing sells a breakfast box made up of smoked haddock fillets, smoked salmon and a pair of kippers that’s pitched squarely at the Sunday brunch market. Meanwhile, Secret Smokehouse’s kippers are stocked in Fortnum & Mason’s food hall, as well as popping up on the menu of a growing number of buzzy London restaurants.
One of them is The Wolseley. ‘We hated them as kids,’ head chef David Stevens admits. ‘Our mum poached them in the oven and they used to really smell.’ When he and his staff were putting the menu together, there was never any question that kippers wouldn’t be on it. ‘Some of our longstanding regular guests are fans; they know that, if they come here, that’s what they’ll be ordering for breakfast.’ The Wolseley’s are grilled—rather than being subjected to the Beetonesque indignities of ‘jugging’ (where you stand them upright in a jug, pour boiling
For much of the 20th century, smoked herrings were a superior way to start the day
We’re producing a traditional British food and it’s great to have them in the range
water over them and leave them for five minutes)—and served with mustard butter that hums with both wholegrain and Dijon.
‘People overcook them, so they become a bit of a dry mess,’ Mr Stevens laments, counselling a light touch. Mr Bergius agrees: he’s a fan of putting them under the grill to crisp them up and serving with a poached egg and sourdough toast. ‘Have that for breakfast and you won’t need anything until teatime,’ he states confidently.
Yet they remain a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. ‘A lot of people like the idea of a kipper,’ chef Rowley Leigh writes in the Financial Times, but ‘somehow, courage fails them and they fail to order them.’ Kippers still have, he feels, a bit of a PR problem: not for the faint-hearted and a pain to eat.
Back at Secret Smokehouse, Mr Bergius is giving this kipper sceptic the full sales pitch. ‘They’re basically simply a bigger sardine,’ he contends, pointing to their attractive price (a hefty pair costs £8) and raft of health benefits (as well as omega-3, they’re rich in vitamin B12 and selenium). He produces a post-war booklet issued by the Herring Industry Board, which he found online. It’s packed with recipes that actually sound quite tempting (even I like the sound of the oatmeal-crusted ones) and poohpoohs the accusation that they’re fiddly. ‘Get hold of the tail and peel it and the bones come straight out, like in a cartoon.’ Where does this kipper evangelism come from?
‘When I was growing up on the west coast of Scotland, Dad would always take us to this amazing old smokehouse just south of Lochgilphead,’ he explains. ‘We’d get kippers from there early, drive home and have our Sunday breakfast.’ Another formative influence was Loch Fyne Oysters: ‘When I was a kid, the company was simply a shed in a lay-by, with sides of salmon wrapped in newspaper—i’ll always remember those honest, innocent flavours.’
When he opened Secret Smokehouse, Mr Bergius knew he wanted to be ‘very much a traditionalist’ in his approach to herrings. ‘They’re wild fish, like haddock—you have to follow them around the country to get hold of them,’ he advises. He only buys from British waters, which contain huge schools that perform synchronised manoeuvres close to the water’s surface (in Old Norse, the word ‘herring’ means ‘army’). Sticking
to domestic stocks does complicate things: ‘You’re at the mercy of all these variables. It’s a challenge, which is one of the nice things about it. Sometimes we’ve got them, sometimes we don’t.’
Christmas is the busiest time for kippers—but, even then, they’re a labour of love. ‘Are they going to make us millions? No,’ he admits. ‘But we’re producing a traditional British food and it’s great to have them in the range.’ He looks back at the gleaming smokers that are smouldering away. ‘There are a million different ways you can do it, but hand on heart, I think this is the one,’ he smiles.