A Whitebait Birthday
Bistro Guillaume
Crown Complex
8 Whiteman Street
Southbank, Vic
03 9693 3888

It started with a gloating trans-Tasman phone call from my sister, Barbara, on her birthday earlier in the same week as mine. ‘Guess what I had for my birthday? Whitebait fritters’.
 
You have to have been born in New Zealand to realise what a crowing taunt that is. Whitebait. To a Kiwi or ex-Kiwi it is the caviar of the South Pacific. Hard to get and almost as expensive. Those tiny, tasty, translucent little silvery suckers about the size of a matchstick.
 
 Sure, ‘whitebait’ is allegedly served in many Greek and Italian restaurants, but they are really sardines.
 
In Canada they serve a similar dish and call them Smelts. In Britain they are Sprats. But whitebait they ain’t. There’s another vulgar version imported from Taiwan. They look a bit like New Zealand Whitebait but they are not and don’t taste remotely like the real thing.
 
So where does Bistro Guillaume at Crown fit into all this?  Whitebait is not on the menu there. But after my sister’s skiting phone call I made one of my own: to Adam Sivic one of the best, most likeable, maitre d’s in this country.
 
 One of those ‘I know this is an imposition… probably impossible… hate to mention it… would you, could you….it’s my birthday….’ phone calls.
 
He talked to the Head Chef, Beau Vincent. He talked to his regular supplier, Ocean Made in Collingwood. And for my birthday Guillaume served me whitebait.
 
They weren’t quite the way I cook them but there they were –delightful  clumps of whitebait just held together in a light batter. And all mine because Mrs. Nosebag hates them.
 
Partly because you can see those beady little eyes and partly because, like a lot of Australians, she thinks the dish is vastly over-rated.
 
On the ‘over-rated’ critique, She Who Is Always Right is probably right. Again. Like with a lot of foods, your memories of a dish colour your appreciation of it.
 
My whitebait memories go back to when I was a kid. During the spawning season the mother fish would swim upstream to hatch and then we’d block off a stream as the baby fish wriggled back towards the sea.
 
No wonder they almost became extinct because the babies were the only the only ones we caught.
 
In those days, at the height of the season, I remember Kurta’s Fish Shop in the main street of New Plymouth. In season, the refrigerated window was a silver carpet of shimmering whitebait.
 
It was cheap as chips, as they say, and we’d buy it by the cupful for Mum to make whitebait fritters. At the time, my Dad was a bus driver for Gibson Motors. On his way back from Auckland he’d often be given a five-gallon kerosene tin of whitebait by the Maori women who fished the Mokau River. No wonder they nearly became extinct.
 
My lifelong love of whitebait was born. In the years living across the world in New York my annual request for birthday and Christmas presents was simple. Cans of whitebait. Not quite as good as fresh or frozen but close enough.
 
Now most New Zealand whitebait is frozen for export or some air freighted over here. Last time I bought some in New Zealand it cost about 100 dollars a kilo.
 
On that visit across the ditch I ended up in a whitebait challenge cook off with my older brother’s partner and my sister. We all had similar recipes but with subtle differences.
 
The only way to eat this is in fritters with the fish bound together by as little beaten egg as possible. The less whitebait you can afford the more egg you have to use.
 
First was my brother’s partner Cynthia’s way. She came from the West Coast of the South Island where whitebait is still prolific.
 
First up she committed the cardinal sin. She washed them! Stripping them of that distinctive fishy odour. She then added flour, some milk, baking soda, pepper and salt.
 
Then, as always, the fritters were served with slices of buttered white bread and wedges of lemon.
 
Sister Barbara didn’t wash them but did strain them to remove some of the juice. Beautiful free range farm eggs beaten and left to aerate for several minutes to make the batter light. And the farm eggs so yellow they made the  fritters golden.
 
The Hungry Hinch way: Not washed. Very little beaten egg. Just a splash of milk if you insist. Definitely no flour. No Salt. No pepper. Let the little wrigglers speak for themselves.
 
Thanks Guillaume.
 
Footnote: Early in my relationship with the then Ms. Nosebag we were dining at The Dog’s Bar in St. Kilda. A favourite spot. They had whitebait on the menu. I knew they’d be sardines but was assured by the waiter, under questioning, that they were ‘genuine, real whitebait’. From New Zealand? ‘From New Zealand’.
 
The dish arrived. They were sardines. To Ms. Nosebag’s horror I put the plate on the ground. For the dogs. Well, it was The Dog’s Bar.