The Taste of Repulsion (or a meditation on fermented shark)

Hákarl. Fermented shark. Whatever the language, the Icelandic delicacy inspires distaste among the gastro-tourists. The distaste extends beyond bloggers and Trip Advisor reviews — even Anthony Bourdain, iron-stomach extraordinaire, dubs it ‘unspeakably nasty’. Travelers concur: fermented shark is not worth exporting. 

Iceland's tourist economy provides ample opportunities for those curious to sample the country’s weirdest foods without wasting an expensive meal. Supermarkets sell small tubs of hákarl, packs of dried fish and rúgbrauð, Icelandic rye bread. Only skyr, a strained cheese that resembles Greek yogurt in taste and texture, comes in large containers, speaking to Icelanders’ confidence in the product’s appeal. 

But even supermarkets packages can be too big. That's where restaurants like Cafe Loki step in. The all-day restaurant cooks Icelandic dishes for tourists streaming in from adjacent Hallgrmískirkja, a large modern-gothic church and Reykjavik's most recognizable landmark. Diners pick from open-faced sandwiches on rye bread and platters offering guidebook-marked must-tries. Perhaps the only disgust-inducing dish not available is svið, lamb head served alongside turnip and potato mash.

Fermented shark comes either as a sampler or as part of a platter. Whatever you choose, you receive a smattering of pristine white cubes marked with an Icelandic flag toothpick, a prize for ingesting the offending product.

Image via Audrey, Flickr

When my meal arrived, I started with the shark. It's served cut into sugar-cube sized pieces and only a few shades darker than one. From far away there's no aroma, but a sharp, vinegary bite develops as you bring it toward your mouth. The vinegar flavor intensifies as you chew through the toothy, jelly-like fish. But this soon succumbs to a salty odor that travels up your nose and down your throat, burning like horseradish or vodka. After swallowing it's not the flavor you remember, but rather the total combination of aroma, texture and aftertaste.

I was not disgusted. I quite liked it. I ate two pieces and would have eaten more had my dining companions not also wanted to try. Shoving the innocuous pieces into their mouths, their faces contorted -- disgust. Most people I talked to who tried it recalled the same reaction -- disgust. 

But, why? What about this innocent-looking foodstuff turns the stomach? Was my confessed enjoyment an affectation that went along with my appreciation of aquavit, dark rye bread and salty licorice? Although I'd prefer to think otherwise, I'm involved in a food culture that praises the daring but expects personal preferences to collide with cultural background. In this sense, my enjoyment wasn’t a natural reaction, but rather a culturally-informed response. Knowing the food’s social meaning, I ate it and enjoyed it to identify with contemporary foodies and foreign cultures. I have a taste for these flavors and sensations because I want to identify with the Nordic community. Whether or not food actually identifies me as I wish is irrelevant; ingesting these products allows me the self-identification I desire.

Flickr via Chris Wronski

There might be another, less personal, reason for this universal distaste. Disgust is the pre-determined reaction in front of fermented shark. Diners are conditioned to respond in this way and so they do. I have never read an article where the author doesn’t hate hákarl. Maybe Icelanders want it this way -- they eat this product, we don’t. They play a joke on unsuspecting foreigners; foreigners have a joke played on them. Perhaps together we create an environment that invents the modern meaning of an ancient product. Whether or not Icelanders eat fermented shark on a daily basis is irrelevant as it makes up part of their culture and lore that visitors don’t share. They have a taste. We don't

The conditions under which non-Icelanders eat hákarl reproduce this dynamic. From the small portion sizes to the special consumption locations, the presentation directs us away from enjoyment. We enjoy a large plate of steaming lamb, we sample fermented shark. It’s not a food, it’s a taste. It's the small canapé, the pre-dinner nibble that we want to eat but hold back from knowing that we should save room for the main meal, a meal that will undoubtedly satisfy us in a deeper way than the small pickings presented first. How can we enjoy this product when we aren't given the opportunity to? Tourist accounts of fermented shark don't recount disgust because it's the only response to this product, but because it's the natural response to the presentation.  

I liked fermented shark. Or, I think I did. Although the product has a divisive taste, texture and sensation, the cultural cues that permeate its representation prevent impartiality. If only we could do away with these markings, tasting the fermented food blindfolded in a room with offending products we enjoy (Roquefort? Kimchi? Marmite?). Then maybe we'd be able to appraise hákarl without prejudice. But until then, eating fermented shark means ingesting your place within global food culture and identifying with a pre-conditioned reaction. 

The Invented Tradition of Industrial Italian Food

The pink set sun bounced off the Adriatic, illuminating the golden crust. You’d have heard the shatter of knife piercing through if not for the whistling breeze and breaking waves. We sat meters away at a table nestled in the sand. During my week living with a host family in San Bendetto del Tronto, a seaside resort in Italy’s central Le Marche, I’d grown used to this panorama. I’d also grown used to the food. Forget the platters of squishy spaghetti ai frutti di mare tourists ate at nearby seaside restaurants. My host family and I chowed down on pre-fried, oven-reheated spinacine — spinach and chicken patties — fresh from the plastic freezer packaging.

Some fall for Italian food when served dishes toothy pasta flecked with guanciale or salads glowing with olive oil slick tomatoes. Not I. I reveled in meals that would challenge seasoned food photographers. I discovered Italian cuisine as imagined by Esselunga, Coop and Conad — the country’s main supermarket chains. Meandering through their aisles with my host family and, later, on my own, the diverse palette revolutionized my understanding of food’s affective potential. From mossy green spinacine and wheat-yellow Mulino Bianco biscuits to deep-orange peach Esta Thé and vivid blue Barilla boxes, the exotic personalities of Italy’s industrial food products beguiled me. Although popular American culture lauds an Italian cooking that features local produce, hyper-regional recipes and smiling grandmothers, the reality I encountered demonstrated a different fantasy of Belpaese gastronomy.

That’s not to say this traditional cuisine doesn’t exist but rather that it doesn’t speak to the range of diets present that characterize the Peninsula in the 21st century. Since the 1950s, with the influx of foreign aid from the Marshall Plan, Italians have increasingly eschewed rural life in favor of urban existence as dictated by industry. Daily routines have responded to these changes in institutional structures. ISTAT, Italy’s equivalent of the Census Bureau, shows that the intervening 60 years has led Italians to eat breakfast regularly and to consume lunch at work or school, while dinner remains a daily family ritual, though with less time devoted to preparing it. These years also witnessed an influx of new products from frozen and prepared foodstuffs to international restaurant chains and exotic cuisines. As incomes ballooned, Italian families spent money on the luxury foods previously restricted to fantasies and Christmas. Although Italian cooking based on whole ingredients — the kind lauded travelogues — remains relevant to Italy’s 21st-century consumers, overlooking the country’s burgeoning industrial food sector betrays the complexity of the Belpaese’s culinary history.

I first encountered Italian industrial food at breakfast, coating perfect-crescent shaped brioche with abundant spoonfulls of Nutella. Breakfast highlights the interplay between whole foods and industrial production in creating the contemporary Italian diet. From the plastic wrapped fette biscottate to the apricot crostata with an eerily perfect lattice crust, Italy’s industrial bakeries provide Italians with nostalgia during the hours when it would be most difficult to prepare. In recounting their prima colazione of years past, older Italians mention meals of dried bread dipped in tazze d’orzo or the occasional piece of fresh bread with a veil of jam. Although these breakfasts might seem easy to reproduce within a chaotic modern schedule, the country’s increasingly sedentary lifestyle combined with an emphasis on dieting means that breakfast no longer needs to provide fuel, but a delicious antidote to the work day’s oncoming stress. Whether pausing for a caffè and fluffy brioche at the bar or dunking crumbly biscuits in caffelatte at the kitchen table, the contemporary Italian breakfast is a quick routine that demonstrates the triumph of urban consumption over utilitarian fuel.

But nostalgia remains for the old ways. Mulino Bianco — a subsidy of Barilla pasta — responds by producing biscuits, snacks, American-style loaf bread and cakes for grocery stores that pair the desire for the past with modernity’s convenience. Barilla introduced the brand in 1974 to consolidate their presence in the burgeoning consumer food market. Since then, the company’s astute marketing has propelled them to dominate Italy’s baked good sector with a 6.9% share of the market in 2014. From a life-sized recreation of their namesake ‘white mill’ to an array of games and prizes to entice kids, Mulino Bianco constructs a universe in which the rural dream of cucina povera — literally ‘poor cooking’ — manifests itself in mass culture. 

Following Mulino Bianco’s success, other companies have capitalized upon the Italian desire for bygone foodways through ready meals, food chains and novelty products. These brands suggest that only modern consumption patterns can recapture Italy’s fabled quality comestibles. Grom, an international gourmet gelato chain founded in Turin, describes themselves as ‘il gelato come una volta’ — ice cream as it used to be. If a proliferation of options defines contemporary consumer society, then Grom emphasizes the singularity of their gelato to feign opposition to the market system that enables their existence. But a quick stroll through the grocery stroll reveals Grom doesn’t monopolize bygone quality. There’s Motta’s Antica Gelateria del Corso (roughly translated as ye olde gelato shop on main street), which sells a supermarket frozen desserts. There’s Viva la Mamma box, which offers microwaveable packages of pasta in traditional sauces like a mythical mamma might make. Although the industrial correlation of quality, nostalgia and industry might baffle the foreigner habituated to the idyllic notion of agriturismo, both representations share a belief that modern-life has resituated the role quality and pleasure play in the domestic Italian kitchen.

Even agriturismo dreams are ceding to industrial bounty. Eataly, the international chain of Italian grocery stores aligned with Slow Food (most vocally so in Italy), offers pre-packaged soups, mass produced biscuits and cases of bottled mineral water. In this sense, the regular presence of industrial food in the Italian diet suggests a stronger influence than the occasional agriturismo. This isn’t to say that Italians only eat processed foods or don’t champion traditional products — they have the highest amount of DOP and IGP protected products in the EU. Rather, it suggests the contemporary Italian dietary landscape is more complex and joyfully paradoxical than the foreign tourism imaginary illustrates.

During my years living in Italy I have spent hours in supermarkets analyzing novel pasta shapes, erudite frozen foods and delightful merendine, snack cakes. Each new product presents a new marvel. From the salty crunch of a spinacine — spinach and chicken croquette — to the rough crunch of a Mulino Bianco biscuit — tarallucci, please! — Italian industrial food products speak to my imaginary of Italian food in a way that reality fails to do. Reality is saddled with history. Italian gastronomy’s complex vocabulary and philology marks every menu, both at home and abroad. The burden of ordering becomes the burden of history — don’t get the gnocchi al tartufo in Naples or gnocchi alla romana in Turin. Although internal migration has mitigated the distinctions between regions, each area retains authority over the recipes from their environs. A different history applies to Italian industrial foodstuffs — the history of fantasy. Ripping open the plastic on a Pan di Stelle cake or cracking open a box of trofie al pesto from Viva la Mamma allows you to feign the tradition you want. Close your eyes and you can ramble around Puglia’s gravelly hills or spill sauce on mamma’s yellow tablecloth. Close your eyes and relish your Italian food dream. 

How to Become a Regular at Maison Bertaux in London

Becoming a regular at Maison Bertaux demands patience — London’s oldest patisserie is among its busiest. During the morning, Japanese tourists crowd around tables with cameras hovering over their breakfast pastries. Come afternoon, Soho’s masses swing by to refuel with coffee and cake. Yet, despite its popularity, Maison Bertaux retains the intimacy of a country teahouse, beckoning you inside with fairy lights, sugar and chipped teacups.

Upon arriving in London for graduate school, I made it my mission to become a regular. I solidified my order. I established my preferred seat. After two weeks, I memorized the route there. At the end of the first month, I recognized other patrons. By four months, I chatted with the waiters and my order was a foregone conclusion when I entered. And yet, with each passing week, Maison Bertaux opened up like a treasure chest revealing new art one day and new regulars the next.

Although the cafe calls itself a French patisserie, it avoids the pre-packaged continental glamour of Laduree and the like. As soon as you enter the owner, Michelle Wade, greets you with a harried ‘Hello’ and requests your order. She could list the various pastries available — she started working there at sixteen, she’s intimate with the offerings — or you could wait for the single waiter to find the single laminated menu, by now stained with coffee and cream. It’s simpler to head to the window and point to the pastry that catches your eye. Morning? Opt for a croissant, which emerge from the kitchen at regular intervals and are left to cool on any and every available surface. Afternoon? Choose a scone studded with sultanas or a fruit tart abundant enough to serve two at nearby Pierre Herme. The pastries elude the precise glamour of their French counterparts, but their cracks offer relief from the polished experience of contemporary London life.

The coffee follows a similar pattern. Forget your meticulous flat white, at Maison Bertaux drinks prepare the stomach for a symphony of butter, sugar and flour. Sip on a creamy café au lait or brace yourself for a dense café noir (this is a French café, leave the Italian drinks at Bar Italia). Tea arrives in pots stolen from a life-sized dollhouse. But leave the rich hot chocolate for those rare chillier-than-chilly mornings in January and February.

On those days you’ll want a seat downstairs, where the constant to and fro of patrons and pastries heats the room. Otherwise, linger upstairs with art by The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding or duck next door for optimal people watching. No matter where you sit, you’ll slide out of the plastic chairs and watch your coffee and pastry teeter on the edge of the narrow, plastic-coated tables. Like the glitter-bedecked memorabilia covering the walls, broken teacups stuffed with sugar and flowers in makeshift vases clutter the tables. But being conversant in these quirks creates the homey charm of Maison Bertaux.

These quirks encompass the food. During my breakfasts, I’ve developed a catalog of the croissants’ endless variations. Unlike their restrained French counterparts, Maison Bertaux’s emerge from the oven large, deeply brown and oozing butter. Regardless of how they look that day, they fall off the plate they’re served on. Crack off an end — you might get both together or they might be on opposite ends of the plate. Whether you dip it in coffee or bite in immediately, a thin layer of crumbs dusts your pants against which the single paper napkin provides feeble defense. The pastry’s chewy bite and lack of sweetness justifies the mess — no matter when you visit, that’s for certain.

It’s a warm but grey spring morning and I meander through Soho’s morning-after calm with a flutter in my stomach. I’ve been away for a month. Will my Maison Bertaux still be there? In the past four weeks spring transformed London from a dark grey collection of shabby coats to an all-night rave covered in neon paint. The door jangles and I fall into the informal queue that’s formed. After a quick hello and smile I repeat my order and head upstairs. “Oh, of course,” the owner chirps. And with a smile I’m back home, where nothing has changed.