What is up with the lack of rotten fish in Toronto? Seriously, anyone who has a craving for decrepit old herring, the kind that smells like terrible diaper caca, is kind of screwed in this town because it’s nearly impossible to find surströmming here.
The fact that this odd Swedish delicacy, the stinkiest of all stinkies, is mostly unavailable in Toronto is curious. How difficult can it be to manufacture rotten fish? Take a bunch of herring, throw it into a bucket and chillax for a few months. Sell for a ridiculous profit. Easy peasy.
Well, yes, there is that whole thing about “market demand,” and most people don’t care for surströmming. Scandinavian people apparently like it. In North America, it’s considered disgusting, like most other interesting things. But it’s actually really good — fascinatingly good — as long as you can ignore your body’s full-fledged instinct to just stay the Jesus Murphy away from the stuff.
As an eater of all things putrid, I had been searching for surströmming in Toronto for a while, to no avail. Not even Karelia Kitchen, a Scandinavian café on Bloor West, stocks it. So thank the Gods of Asgard for Jamie Drummond, a local writer and sommelier, who recently made a trip to Stockholm and purchased a few cans to bring back to Toronto. He hosted a stinky fish party at Midfield Wine Bar last week to raise money for The Stop. I made sure to attend.
Surströmming smells way, way worse than pretty much anything. It is difficult to convey the aroma without referencing fecal matter. I asked Drummond to describe it using stuffy sommelier language, but he just sighed and said, “I can’t go there right now.” So just imagine an odour that pairs very well with potty humour, one that emanates much farther than you’d ever expect a smell to emanate.
The appearance is almost equally as gross. Peering inside a can of surströmming is like visiting the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings, or like gazing upon the remains of a bunch of stubborn fish who got caught up in some kind of ideological war, who dug trenches and slaughtered each other with mortars and then got rained on until they all ended up a big pile of rot-meat in the mud.
The taste, though, is stupendous. It’s like anchovies times a bazillion, and it’s worth every second of odour-inspired trepidation. If the flavour were a person, it would be one of those old-school strongmen from freak shows of yore, who weren’t sculpted like pretty little Arnold Schwarzenegger but were straight-up brawny to their very souls. Bald, with those rolls at the base of their necks, and they were probably sleeping with the bearded lady, too.
Tasting surströmming is the culinary equivalent of skydiving. It’s like taking electric currents of saltiness and umami and hooking them straight to your gonads. It’s good on its own, but it’s great with a bit of onion and flatbread. And the fun just refuses to stop — the soap-immune stench remains on your hands for hours afterward.
Conclusion: I don’t know who invented surströmming, and am actually kind of mystified that it ever came to be. But in tribute, I am going to have a Jerry Maguire moment and just stand atop my chair and shout “surströmming” three times in a row. Man that felt good.
Jon Sufrin is the editor of PostCity.com. For his column, Eating Gross Things, he eats things that are widely considered to be gross and writes about it. He has no scientific method to determine what “gross” means. The article is just meant to be fun, so relax. For more of his thoughts on stuff, gross and not, follow him on Twitter. If you would like to suggest a gross food item for him to try, email him at jonsufrin@postcity.com.