FINCH & CHIMPS - part deux

Back when I was a dedicated urban chow-boy Friday’s dinner meant a few pints and some Fish & Chips at a certain pub on Spring Garden Rd. The pints and conviviality are what drew me; I didn’t mind the F & C there but that Matterhorn of pre-cooked fish clearly visible in the kitchen as you entered made me want to avert my face. It spoiled the meal. Well OK, the meal was spoiled because the fish was severely overcooked. The mountain of fish just foreshadowed it.

Conversely, one of the pure pleasures of picking up the Friday night Fish and Chips when I was a kid was going there with a parental unit and watching as they made our order. The beefy guy with the red face (every shop had one, usually sporting forearm tattoos) would drop the fish into a big stainless steel bowl full of rested batter and then slip the delicate morsels into a deep fryer separate from the chips fryer.

After getting a layer of fat on your skin we’d “pick up” and rush home before the batter got soggy. (Then my sister and brothers would pass on the fish and I’d eat it all after giving them my fries.) It was heaven.

Anyway, every once in a while I have to travel to Musquodoboit Harbour. Right across the highway from the Railway Museum stands a nondescript box of a place; in front they have one of those big illuminated signs on wheels declaring specials, and inside you’ll find three measly tables, almost always filled with regulars. A young lanky guy will be talking up the same patrons, working the fish fryer and discussing - wow - fresh fish and where he’s sourcing it from. I’m never there long enough to make conversation but I’m guessing he’s the owner.

There’s the regular assortment of deep fried everything and if you’re a heathen you can get a burger or a hot dog. But the Fish, made while you watch, come out golden and super crispy. This guy must filter his fat daily because on the dozen or so times I’ve eaten from there I haven’t detected a hint of bitterness in the batter. So what if the tarter sauce isn’t made there? Who cares about the so-so slaw? The fries are frozen? Big deal! This guy gives a damn and I can’t get through the town without getting an order. Now all he needs are forearm tattoos.

His staff talks to you like you’re important; take out orders are wrapped with care. He closes down when you get past the Fall “shoulder season.” Rats.

My wife told me about Large Marge’s in Lunenburg. We now go often. A space with all the accoutrements of a fifties diner – booths, juke boxes, a counter with stools, a dessert fridge above grade and beside the milk shake mixers – Large Marge’s wants to be liked for its retro feel and honest cooking.

I like it. A fairly young guy in a hairnet served us last time and he did an able job; all he forgot was my son’s milk. And the cook forgot the bacon for my son’s bacon cheeseburger. Not a problem. Everything was fixed toute de suite. My wife and I went for the Fish and Chips. While I tried to keep my son distracted while he waited for his food I watched another lanky guy go to the fridge grab his batter and fish and do the orders. Gotta say it put a smile on my face.

I think a dish of F & C there was listed as over 8 bucks, kind of stiff for a single order, but when it arrived I changed my opinion. The fish was the size of a paddle blade and it was covering a heap of fries. Lemon wedges? Check. Decent slaw? Check and double check. The two thumbs up across the booth were a result of both the food and the milk shakes served in tall glasses with the remaining stuff still in the metal mixing thingies. My wife ate there the other day during my son’s hockey practice. She’s addicted.

I’m just impressed.

FINCH ‘N CHIMPS - part one

I confess that I have less imagination when ordering food at pubs and diners than the owners have in composing their menus. Go ahead, offer me the eponymous burgers, the clubs, the hot roast beef sandwiches; go ahead and don’t worry, because I always and helplessly order the Fish & Chips. Note how I capitalize those two words.

A plate of Fish & Chips freights more memory meaning for me than family Roast Beef suppers on Sunday. Because of my pious Roman Catholic upbringing (Fridays, OK?) in Scarberia - where every strip mall had one F & C shop with a sign pasted to their front window proclaiming “We proudly serve Halibut” - I gorged on the stuff at least once a month. (After moving Down East I discovered the “Proudly Serve” scam: Halibut, because of its density, allowed servings of saltine-thin pieces of fish. They could claim “premium” fish but the batter to flesh ratio was best expressed as a square root.)

The supposed common sense of deep middle age has not released me from the pleasures of forking into crispy batter and the white treasures within. And I still believe that a well turned platter of Fish & Chips tests a line cook’s mettle.

More prefatory remarks: I don’t ascribe to tartar sauce but I always sample it, usually by dipping my fries into it. Tartar sauce masks flavour, period. I also and always eat the coleslaw, mostly because I’m also and always looking for an establishment that can produce coleslaw that tastes better than the crap at the grocery store. On most days luck eludes me here, and that is due to the use of food processors, infernal machines that can only produce light green cole-pulp.

In Chester you can bring a dead cat and swing it successfully: no less than four establishments serve F & C and a walking tour to all of them would last less than an hour. Down at Queen & Pleasant lies the Fo’c’sle Tavern, a decent pub that caters to almost all of the cliques in the village. I’ve never returned the F & C there, but the dish does not inspire rhapsodies; the chips are hand cut shoestring style, but lack crisp; the fish is double deep fried - which always equals over-cooked. And the last time I was there the fish arrived looking like two deep fried Twinkies.

Now you gotta agree they’ve got this kinda ass backward. The way you give fries a crisp exterior is to cook them twice; that’s why frozen fries aren’t totally horrible and that is what is meant by “french fries.” Go ahead and look it up. And double cooking fish is the only way to guarantee the molecular breakdown of the flesh into a mealy fiber pile. Lots of restaurants do it to save time but when I dream about it I wake with a start.

Service is usually good at the Fo’c’sle, except on wing nights wherein it’s a bit rushed, but your experience will be vastly improved if you know or meet someone there: combine a pint of whatever with those long tables and benches and you have the makings for great group meal.

Stacy’s Diner on Highway 3, with about a dozen tables and a diner look that could be copyrighted as “Rural Nondescript,” does a decent job. The batter is hard-crisp (cooked once though) and you can choose regular fries (frozen) or “home cut,” i.e., hand cut. The tartar sauce comes in those tiny corporate tubs and the coleslaw is edible. Service is friendly, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a lemon wedge.

The Duke Street Eatery next to the Irving gas bar is a restaurant that’s easy to miss – it doesn’t call out to you when you’re behind the wheel - so I’ve only eaten their F&C once. The fries were frozen, the fish wasn’t overcooked and the batter was light, but the service stood out: the woman serving me and mine made me feel very welcome. And they had malt vinegar in a bottle so The Kid was happy.

The Windjammer restaurant on Highway 3 as you venture – trepidatiously – towards Chester Basin, keeps changing hands but never recipes. You can spend a fair amount of money on dinner there if you want to; it has the most extensive menu of the bunch. But I always order the you-know-what and I dig in. The batter is light and crisp and it’s – holy mackerel! – herbed. Tiny green bits speckle the fish batter and add just a little more flavour than you might expect. And the fish is cooked only once! No dissolving haddock here. The coleslaw contains flavour and texture. My wife is the slaw arbiter and she thinks it’s bloody marvelous.

So this is where me and mine prefer to eat F & C in Chester, this is where they deep fry fish like they mean it. And the fries are pretty good too.