Silver Darlings

We are very conscious that this weekend people will want to spend it dealing with the inevitable emotions stemming from the death of Queen Elizabeth, in whichever way they see fit. We’ve always seen ourselves as a retreat from the grind of daily life, and we understand some may wish to carry on while others want to take time thinking and grieving silently. We are carrying on here - we don’t think in hospitality we can close again - but our plan is to feed and water you and allow you to deal with things in the manner which suits you best. And for those who wish for some distraction from the sad news, we offer Luke’s soliloquy to the herring.

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We have just returned from a glorious 2 weeks in Crete. Sunshine, balmy evening breeze and enough Greek Salad to sink one of the battleships chugging in and out of the Soudas Naval base, just across the bay. We have already sat down to plan and diarise our event schedule over the Winter and we’ll be posting very soon. One of the things that I love to eat whenever I’m lucky enough to find myself on a mediterranean island are grilled sardines or those tiny crunch whitebait. Fresh oily fish are very much my thing and they’re good for you too.

That said, I could not give tinkers cuss about Omega 3. No idea what it is. Don’t have a clue, mate. Don’t care. Think I used to play Pac-Man on it in the late eighties but apart from that it’s just words swirling around in my personal ether like ‘carburettor ‘, ‘Jimmy Choo’ or ‘Pokémon’ that I have no business knowing about. I have literally no interest in how a carburetta works, or what Omega 3 does to my tummy.

But Omega 3 is ALL you will hear about if literally anyone writes about oily fish. Omega 3 fatty acids will cure your leprosy! Liven up the bedroom! Make you hurdle like an Olympian! Eat Oily fish and suck up all those life-enhancing lovely fatty acids!

Well I don’t care for such nonsense but if I hear the phrase ‘Silver Darlings’, my cholesterol-laden heart skips a beat at the symbiotic wonderment of nature and our mother tongue. Silver Darlings. I love them so, glinting in the late evening Cornish sun as they are pulled in glistening masses onto dayboats rusted and ancient with stories of yore and stains of tar.

They used to be all we ate. They were the most popular protein for millions and millions of people in these isles, plucked from the icy waters, smoked, salted, devoured, providing life giving sustenance to the poor and an entire industry to hundreds of villages and ports on the south west coast of England and the east coast of Scotland.

Take tiny Clovelly for example- fisherman have trawled the seas there for at least a thousand years and at the height of the herring trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were 100 boats based at the North Devon port, fishing for those beautiful 'Silver Darlings.' In 1814 landed 3.6 million herring with every man in the village employed in the trade until just over a hundred years ago. There’s one now. One brave, poor soul fighting against the dying of the light.

I love the poetry and the history but it’s the taste really makes me want to shake you by the lapels and make you eat more herring. No its not ‘too fishy’ or ‘too bony’ or whatever reason it was that made us as a nation fill our boots with fish fingers and forget our silver darlings. Try writing poetry about a fish finger. Try some - caught on a day boat yesterday, filleted today and fried in butter and bacon fat with a golden crust of oats. Try them and tell me that we, in our neglect of herrings haven’t committed an act of culinary, cultural and historical vandalism that we should all be a little bit ashamed of.

Speaking of day boats, if you’ve got this far in my unfashionable herring rant, you might be interested to know that we have a few tickets available for our Taste East Devon lunch next Friday - The fish will be fresh off the “The KT Sam” and the pork will be organic from Haye Farm - you will meet the suppliers and eat and drink to your heart’s content in our beautiful woodland. You can find more details and book here.