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by Burt Umbre

I overheard my colleague on the phone discussing lunch with his seventy-year-old mother the other day: "Would you like dried fish?" he asked. What is happening when even older white people eat such strange stuff? Even a decade ago, who but the most artsy and flamboyant of the gourmands had even heard of dried salted herring with crackers, let alone eaten them for lunch and dinner?

It would be a good thing, all-in-all, except that when everyone wants dried-out food it spoils it for me. Dried and salted herring on stale crackers used to be my favourite food for a long time. Now, it seems that it is the only thing anybody in this town wants to eat, and in response to the demand, restaurants are springing up like mould on a moist biscuit. But let's look closer: Dried herring is made from old fish. To be palatable the fish has to be impeccably dried and salted, and this takes time.

But what if you don't have the big bucks to spend on the good stuff? No problem. Go to markets down by the docks where they will sell you stuff that has only recently come out of the ocean. Most of it is still wet! The only people who mind are those like me who've been spoiled by the good stuff. I'd rather eat a good salted piece of hard-tack once than eat fresh fish three times.

Scoffers may wonder how you tell the difference. It's no challenge. Go drop 70-bucks-a-head on the Norwegian dinner at Hallvard's (newly repainted and pretty in a semi-gloss deep blue with red and white accents). Try going back to the market after that! The dinner starts with a glass holding tap water and a few weak ice cubes. Then comes a cornucopia of tiny treats on a chipped plate: sardines dressed to kill in soy sauce.

A small palate-teaser comes next: two clams floating in the juice from the can. Then the big plate appears: on it not one, not two, not three, but four different dried herring, each curling slightly and dusted with chunks of rock salt. A large bowl of particularly tasteless and dry crackers wait patiently to the side.

If dinner ended there, it would have been fabulous. But the limp salad: iceberge lettuce with a few stray scrapings of carrot, came along with dessert: red Jell-O in a glass cup. I mixed the two together and wiped the bowl clean with my fingers. Was it worth $70 per person, plus tax and tip? Only if you know the difference.

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