I really wanted to settle on whether or not whitebait was worth eating. We saw a sign: "Whitebait sandwiches, $5" in a town called Kumara Junction. Now whitebait is pretty expensive stuff. A typical whitebait patty in a restaurant fetches around $32 so I figured for $5 I could afford to collect some empirical data.
As one would expect, the sandwich was buttered white bread with a "patty" between about the size of a Ritz cracker. It also had the "mouthfeel" of fish jerky. Surely this can't be what everyone raves about.
In Hokitika I asked the front desk woman at our cabin where to go in town to get a true sampling. She mentioned that the "French" restaurant had a dish formed in a cone ($32) and another restaurant had the patty at $30. However, she usually goes to the fish and chips shop and gets the sandwich for $12. This figure fit more precisely into my R&D budget.
We shuffled on down to the shop, and as luck would have it, another male patron had just received one. He was sitting with a group of people. Once he had gotten about half way through it (about 4 bites) I said "Excuse me, but is that sandwich any good?" He held it up and said "have a bite". As you might expect, I laughed and recoiled from his offer. To this he says "What, you think I have some f___ing mouth disease?" So I thought "what the hell" and took a bite. Problem solved. I never have to eat it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment