Fried and True

From the Food Vault Dept.: While we’re on the subject of fish and chips, here’s a look back at a wonderful restaurant in Bennington, Vermont, that I reviewed in 2011. At that point, Kevin Wright had been running his shop for three years; in 2018, wishing to pursue other interests, he sold the place to Nathan Johnson, a Vermont native and regular customer, who has been operating Lil’ Britain ever since. Needless to say, the prices quoted below have changed.

                                                                                       

LONDON’S FIRST FISH-AND-CHIPS SHOP opened in 1860, unless an 1863-dated Lancashire shop came first. But the glory of deep-frying potatoes (the chips portion) was noted at least two centuries earlier, possibly as a substitute for fish during freezes: it seems that the Belgians carved their potato slices into fish shapes.

The popularity of battering and frying slabs of cod or haddock took off during the Industrial Revolution, spurred by the boom in North Sea fisheries and the ease with which fresh seafood could be transported.

Well-traveled Yanks can attest to the appeal of a true British chippy. It’s remarkable for being prosaic, a taken-for-granted part of the UK landscape that never successfully migrated to these shores.

Unless you count the brief popularity of the chain to which Merv Griffen sidekick Arthur Treacher lent his name, its terrible food probably doing much to ensure that the hamburger remained the fast food king.

Manchester: Part One

THIS PART OF OUR JOURNEY actually begins in 1972. Allow me to quote myself: I was a high-school junior in suburban Connecticut, freshly infatuated with the stage, so it was only natural that I would join my fellow theater-arts students on a week-long show-going excursion to London that February. A mere $300 bought airfare, hotel room, and tickets.

The first show we saw was a musical version of “The Canterbury Tales.” I didn’t like it very much. Next was “Never the Twain,” a quirky mash-up of works by Kipling and Brecht, which was far more appealing, but by then I realized that some of my favorite actors were performing on the West End, and I forsook the rest of the scheduled offerings in favor of such fare – beginning with Alec Guinness in John Mortimer’s “A Voyage Round My Father,” which I wrote about here in 2012.

Three years later, I received this email message:

I was crawling around, looking up a show I was once in, when I came across yr blog, where you write about a trip to London in Feb 1972, and a theatre-binge you went on. Hah - I'd been in Canterbury Tales in 1970, which you thought crap, and was in Never the Twain, a Brecht-Kipling conflation you thought more interesting.

Rachel McDermott and Dancing Grain

In Memoriam Dept.: For quite a few years I wrote for the website knowwhereyourfoodcomesfrom.com, founded and eagerly maintained by Frank Barrie, a retired administrative law judge for the NYS Division of Tax Appeals. He was as passionate about the arts as he was about good food, and we’d often see each other at various concerts and plays. Below is the last piece I wrote for him. By the time I submitted it, I learned that he had died suddenly on October 1, just a week after he posted his last piece to the website.

                                                                                             

TRAVEL NORTH ON ROUTE 9 from Saratoga Springs NY and you’ll see the city’s urban characteristics fall away, revealing the rural aspects of the county. By the time you reach Dancing Grain Farm Brewery, which is in the town of Gansevoort or Moreau, depending on the map, it’s farm country. But the brewery’s parking lot is full of cars and you see people lined up to taste the beer or settled on the deck to enjoy it. This is Rachel McDermott’s dream come true but, like anything to do with farming, the easygoing nature of the place hides the tremendous amount of work that’s behind it.

“I didn’t buy a farm in order to brew,” she explains. “I built a brewery in order to farm.” But there’s a more complicated backstory to her mission, because she grew up here, on this farm, then left to become an investment banker. Her father, Jim Czub, and his brother Robert leased what eventually became over 2500 acres in the Moreau area, growing corn, soybeans, and hay. As land values increased in Saratoga County, they lost access to more and more of that land, eventually purchasing what has become the 308-acre brewery property in 2016.

The Manchester Man

Guest Blogger Dept.: Before we travel to Manchester, I offer a vintage taste of the town. These are the opening pages of The Manchester Man, a novel published in 1876 by Isabella Banks. In the tradition of what was once termed lady novelists, it appeared in three volumes, issued using her married name, Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. And who can resist a writer who parts her name on the side? The story chronicles the life of the fictional Jabez Clegg, alongside whom we see many significant historical events, such as the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the disastrous launch of the cargo ship Emma, which capsized and cost some 47 passengers their lives. Although the book is not very well known today, you can celebrate it by visiting the pub named Jabez Clegg in central Manchester. We meet the infant Jabez when his cradle is carried along the flooding river Irk in 1799.

                                                                                       

Old Market Street

WHEN Pliny lost his life, and Herculaneum was buried, Manchester was born. Whilst lava and ashes blotted from sight and memory fair and luxurious Roman cities close to the Capitol, the Roman soldiery of Titus, under their general Agricola, laid the foundations of a distant city which now competes with the great cities of the world. Where now rise forests of tall chimneys, and the hum of whirling spindles, spread the dense woods of Arden; and from the clearing in their midst rose the Roman castrum of Mamutium, which has left its name of Castle Field as a memorial to us. 

But where their summer camp is said to have been pitched, on the airy rock at the confluence of the rivers Irk and Irwell, sacred church and peaceful college have stood for centuries, and only antiquaries can point to Roman possession, or even to the baronial hall which the Saxon lord perched there for security.