‘We don’t want to be big. We want people to love us’
H Forman & Son’s smoked salmon is served in high-end restaurants. The family firm’s boss tells Jack Torrance how it’s prepared
Arriving at H Forman & Son’s east London smokehouse first thing in the morning on a queasy stomach is not advisable. First there is the pungent fishy smell that greets you as you cross the threshold. Then a vast platter of smoked salmon, from truffled royal fillet, the most prized cut of the fish served sashimi style, to jerky made from offcuts and various heady cures using ingredients such as beetroot, wasabi, dill and juniper.
Those of an indelicate nature may not relish the idea of working their way through such a smorgasbord.
But with one bite of the royal fillet it’s clear why Forman’s salmon is able to command its high price tags – up to £50 for a full side – and has earned a place on the shelves of Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.
Lance Forman, the family company’s fourth-generation owner and boss, says the fish owes its revered status to the time-worn techniques used to produce it, known as the London Cure.
The business was started by Forman’s great-grandfather Harry in 1905. A Jew born in Odessa, he fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe for the UK and started smoking imported salmon from the Baltics before discovering that fresher fish from Scotland made for a more luxurious taste. In the factory beneath Forman’s office, a small production line steadily works its way through dozens of fish an hour.
One fishmonger removes the heads, another prises each side off the bone
and a third makes a single nick the size of a 50p piece in each half ’s skin, allowing the salt it is cured in to work its magic.
Whereas some large producers cure their fish in brine to maximise their weight, Forman says drawing out as much moisture is possible is key to prevent the salmon becoming slimy.
It’s also a misconception that smoked salmon ought to taste smoky, he says. “If you have a beautiful fish, why do you want it to taste like an ashtray? You want to taste the fish.”
Once Forman’s fish comes out of its oak-log powered smokers, the pellicle, a crust left over from the process, is removed. Then another knife-wielding team, including the world record holder for pin-boning fish, prepares the salmon for shipping.
As well as targeting high-end restaurants and department stores, the company sells its fish through 140 branches of Waitrose and 100 Sainsbury’s as well as a number of Tesco stores and even Amazon Fresh.
“We’re happy to work with the supermarkets as long as they don’t try to change the way we do things,” Forman says.
It also sells to shoppers directly through its Forman & Field delivery service. The company employs 80 people, up from 40 when he took charge 25 years ago, but Forman refuses to disclose its revenue figures.
“We don’t want to be big, we just want people to love us.”
It also has a burgeoning export business that recently started selling to Hawaii, Texas and China, but coping with foreign regulatory regimes has proven challenging. “We’d filled out all of our forms [to start exporting to China] and sent the packaging to be inspected. We thought it was all going perfectly. But then they came back and said you’ve got to start the whole process again, because it says H Forman & Son on your packaging but H. [dot] Forman & Son on your forms.”
The graffiti-daubed Hackney Wick industrial estate that houses the smokehouse is not one of the more picturesque corners of London. It nonetheless backs onto one of the
more coveted views in the capital, just a few hundred yards from the Elizabeth Park’s Olympic Stadium.
But having been forced to relocate his factory (the previous one stood where the running track is now), it’s fair to say Forman is not the Games’ most vocal advocate.
“This was the greatest concentration of manufacturing land in all of London, and it was essentially wiped out for 17 days of sports.”
While crowds celebrated the news London would be hosting the games in Trafalgar Square, Forman’s stunned reaction was captured on television.
“I felt physically sick. I got home and my son, who was six at the time, said, ‘Daddy, have you still got a job?’”
But having already led the business through a devastating flood that forced it to move and a fire that gutted its factory, he wasn’t going to give up without a fight. After years of drawnout rows with the London Development Agency and then-mayor Ken Livingstone, his demands for a
suitable new site were eventually met.
But even today in the gleaming pink building, designed to look like a cross section of salmon, and having benefited from the media profile the row gave his business, he is still angry about how he was treated.
“There’s no question our business suffered. It was growing like that,” he says, holding his arm at a 45-degree angle. “But suddenly it started shrinking because I was spending most of my time fighting for survival.”
Having spent so long dealing with the intricacies and contradictions of Britain’s arcane planning laws, it’s perhaps no surprise that Forman rails against bureaucracy, which he warns is “grinding us to a halt”. That was one of the factor’s behind his decision to campaign for Brexit, though he says the biggest reason was his fears about the impact of the single currency.
“Without floating exchange rates the only way countries can remain in economic balance is having a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor,”
he says. EU membership hasn’t been without its benefits, however. After years of legwork Forman was able to get Protected Geographical Identification status for the London Cure last year, meaning it joins the ranks of champagne and Stilton in having to be produced to exacting standards in a particular location.
Forman hopes the system will survive Brexit, though he doesn’t fear an influx of copycats should it not.
“If somebody in Germany is making scotch whisky and it tastes terrible, who cares what they call it?”
A former special adviser to the Conservative MP Peter Lilley, it’s clear Forman still harbours a very active interest in party politics. Forman & Field’s bagels are named “Boris” after the former London mayor and Daily Telegraph columnist, who described its HQ as a “smoked salmon theme park”. Forman even considered following in Johnson’s footsteps by running against Sadiq Khan in the forthcoming mayoral poll, but decided
that distractions from running the business, and the partisan attacks that would likely emerge in any campaign, weren’t worth the risk.
Like the three generations before him, Forman hopes to pass the business on to his kin, though for now all three of his grown-up children are doing their own thing.
“A lot of family businesses selfdestruct when the next generation feels an obligation to come straight into the business with nothing to bring to it, no experience from the outside world and no respect from staff.
“My eldest son is 26 and I didn’t join until I was 32, so there’s hope yet,” he adds – though the son’s recent conversion to veganism could complicate things.
“He doesn’t even eat our smoked salmon. We did a party for his wedding last summer, but they insisted the whole celebration was vegan.”
“That said,” he jokes, “he was happy to have the wedding funded by dead fish.”