INTERVIEW: CATHERINE CLEARYjoins a sushi chef at the fish market as he selects his day's catch
Michel Piare sticks two fingers into the gills of a large dead salmon and fans open the delicate fronds. They should be bright red. He checks the eyes to see they’re not cloudy, the texture of the flesh where the belly has been sliced open, and feels along the spine for any damage. When he’s happy, he chooses two fish from the iced boxes and adds them to the batch for his restaurant, Michie Sushi in Dublin 6.
We are at Hanlon Ltd, the fish wholesalers in Cork Street in Dublin in the quiet time before the morning rush hour. This depot is the hub for much of the fish eaten in Dublin restaurants. Piare could phone in his order, but instead he arrives in his chef’s apron at 7am to get his pick of the best. “I just want to pick out what I can see is good. It’s always first in, first out and I want to be first in.” As a sushi chef, he needs the fish to be firm and fresh. Anything less will fall apart under the knife. Behind plastic curtains the fish are being prepared, filleted, descaled and packed on their way to dinner plates around the city.
Piare remembers standing in Smithfield staring at the shell of the empty fish market and wondering how he was going to start a sushi restaurant in Dublin.
When he first arrived, nearly six years ago, the Smithfield market had been closed and he turned to Google to find a supplier. As someone who has stood in Japan’s largest fish market, it was a revelation that the capital city of a small island had no fish market.
Back at Hanlon’s, he picks out four loins of yellowfin tuna and we check the labels to see how far this fish has come. It originated in Surinam. “Irish tuna is sent to Japan,” Piare says. The boxes in the cold room have labels from Norway, India and Galway, where the crates of shellfish are sourced.
Demand will create better fish and seafood in Ireland, and widen the choice, Piare believes. Today he gets red snapper and a vacuum-packed piece of barracuda from the Indian Ocean, the tail end of a special order from one of the big hotels.
As a boy on a farm on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, he watched his father growing and working with food, then helped out in the hotel kitchens in London where his dad worked.
“When I talk to the older generation in Ireland a lot of them say, ‘oh I don’t like fish’. It’s as if they have had a bad experience from childhood and it’s with them for life. The younger generation do like fish.” Travel and a growing awareness of the health benefits of eating fish have all helped this change.
The shipping and distribution channels that have built up make it difficult for people who love fresh fish to find it easily. In ways, Ireland is like a man sitting in sunshine beneath a peach tree heavy with ripe fruit, eating peaches out of a tin.
We can’t grow tomatoes that taste anything like those in hot countries, but we are surrounded by the kind of fish and seafood to make a Frenchman go weak at the knees. More of us are reaching for frozen breaded fish in supermarkets while shipping our island bounty to continental Europe and beyond.
Just 3 per cent of people buy their fish from fishmongers, according to the latest research from Bord Iascaigh Mhara. Last year the frozen-fish market grew by 3 per cent and 7 per cent fewer people bought fresh fish.
The figures all point to the fact that what most people eat as fish bears as much resemblance to the fresh out-of-the-sea experience as a tinned peach does to the real thing. Much of the “fresh fish” laid out on ice counters has been frozen, either at sea or in transit. It will ooze water when you cook it, smell fishier than it should and taste rubbery and tired. It is little wonder that breaded fillets, with their salted coatings, tipped on a tray and reheated, are growing in popularity.
Ross Mulloy watches the fish boxes being loaded into a van outside the window of his fish shop in Howth, which he opened two years ago. The fish boxes will likely be driven to a depot, from where they may well be trucked back to his shop the next day. There used to be a fish auction on the pier where shops such as Mulloy’s could buy their stock, but that closed down.
Mulloy’s closed its city-centre shop on Baggot Street a number of years ago, leaving little competition in Dublin’s city centre for fresh-fish sellers. As a result, Ross Mulloy sees the few remaining city centre retailers selling fresh fish for sometimes nearly double what he’s charging.
As the son of a fishmonger family, he’s only ever eaten fresh fish, unless he has unwittingly eaten frozen fish in a restaurant. “The fish shops here on the pier in Howth are very, very good. The stuff in town is not quite there. I have hake at the moment at €10.95 a kilo. You might find it in town at €19.95.” The expense of fresh fish is one of the reasons people avoid it.
Are we afraid of fish, too?
“Without a doubt,” he says. Many customers come in looking for a certain type of fish and are unwilling to try new things.
“I find cod very bland. But people are like that. They’re very regimented in what they choose. I’ve talked to a lot of English fishmongers and people are much more open across the board to new types of fish.”
