Related Articles
I was working in a London restaurant called The Fire Station at Waterloo in the 1990s when I first became aware of strange nocturnal goings-on in the shellfish trade.
I worked on the starter section, or “larder” as it is quaintly known, and one of our main dishes was chargrilled langoustine. One time they were delivered first thing in the morning and I checked the label on the packaging.
They had been landed in Tarbet, in Scotland, at 6.09pm the evening before – strange how these little details remain in the memory. The reason it made such an impact was because a few years before I had been on holiday at Saddell Castle on the Mull of Kintyre with friends, and one morning some of us had gone to the harbour in Carradale to see if we could get some fish.
On the quayside waiting for the boats was a crowd of Spanish and French buyers, wielding their brick-sized mobile phones and trying their best to snap up everything they could. We managed to get a generous bag of “scampi tails” to cook for dinner as a gift from a very kind fisherman who was impressed at our being up so early.
Back at The Fire Station, I began to retrace the journey of our latest batch of langoustines. They had been landed in the early evening and packed into individual tubes and then into a large polystyrene box, before being labelled and sent to London, presumably by train. The next morning, courtesy of a Royal Mail express service called Datapost, there they were in our kitchen.
When I opened the box, they were still alive, and would remain so until their lunchtime date with our home-made mayonnaise. I mention this now because langoustines have been making the front pages, probably for the first time. The teething problems – or at least I hope that’s what they are – of Brexit have led to this lightning-fast trade in Scottish shellfish being ruined. Queues and red tape mean the live catch simply can’t be got to the customer in time, so it must either be frozen (losing half the value) or go to waste. Meanwhile, the restaurants buying most of this shellfish are closed due to Covid-19. Unsurprisingly, the industry is in crisis.
I have eaten Scottish langoustine in restaurants all over Europe, and they are regarded as a great delicacy, although to get that salty-sweet taste at its best they need to be super fresh.
They have never really been appreciated as much at home – a bit like the 1990s band Bush from west London, who were massive in America, but almost unknown in the UK. The “scampi tails” we were given at the quayside in Scotland all those years ago were from small or damaged shellfish that wouldn’t be of any interest to the big European buyers. They only wanted large, live langoustines: they had come a long way and their market demanded it. In the UK we would smother them in breadcrumbs and cook them from frozen in the deep fat fryer of a pub. They would be sold as “scampi”.
Until now, that is. I hesitate to say it, but the silver lining to this dark cloud is that recently we have been awash with langoustines via the fishmongers at my local farmers’ market. As these can’t be exported, they must be sold in the UK; so really, it is our patriotic duty to eat more of them.
The leftover shells are packed with flavour: they should be roasted and made into a stock. This stock might be used for a bisque on another day, or a dressing to serve with a piece of fish (just reduce the stock significantly, and add olive oil and lemon).
This was the first dish I served to a Michelin inspector at The Sportsman, and it was good enough to win us a Bib Gourmand. Half of the world’s langoustine catch is landed in the UK: it’s one of the glories of our food culture.
Let’s hope that these problems with the trade are solved soon; but in the meantime, let’s eat more of it at home.
