OISTINS, Barbados — Some of the dumbest questions I’ve ever asked as a reporter have concerned food. One time in Belgium I asked my hotel clerk where I could find a good Belgian waffle.
“Belgium,” she deadpanned.
At my old neighborhood market in Rome, I tried asking if the tomatoes had preservatives. Instead, I asked, “I tuoi pomodori hanno preservativi?” (Do your tomatoes have condoms?)
Two weeks ago, however, I might have reached a new low. At least one fisherman in Barbados thinks so. I asked him, “Do flying fish fly?”
Steven Bourne looked at me as if I had asked him if they swim.
“Of course they do,” he said, standing on a boat-landing next to a giant steel container up to his waist in flying fish. “It’s in flight, from about here to the boat over there in the air without stopping.”
He pointed to a boat about 40 feet away. I’ve been around flying fish before. In certain parts of the world, they’ve escorted my boat out to scuba- diving sites. They don’t look like they fly. They look like they leap out of the water, kind of like a king salmon’s really little brother.
But you don’t make fun of flying fish in Barbados. It’s one of the country’s diet staples along with Cou-Cou, a mix of cornmeal and okra with Bajan (Barbadian) hot sauce, and rum punch too strong for even Blackbeard to handle. Flying fish can be found on nearly every menu, and every Barbadian has a half dozen ways he or she prepares it.
Barbados is the little island just to the east of the Caribbean’s Windward Islands. Shaped like a seal sticking its nose up for food, Barbados is the cleanest place I’ve ever been outside Switzerland and certain sections of Singapore.
Littering means jail time, and any toxic-waste dump equals life imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. The people are friendly, and it’s safe enough and private enough to lure the likes of Prince Charles or Will Smith to purchase homes here. Tiger Woods got married here.
Unfortunately, it’s also the favorite holiday spot for thousands of old, fat, pale Brits with unfortunate swimwear. The consequences were my all-inclusive hotel had breakfasts right out of the greasiest spoons in East London: fatty sausage, runny scrambled eggs, evil-looking corned beef hash and too-plump potato cakes.
That helped push me out of the hotel nearly every night, and I ate flying fish almost every day. It’s available all up and down St. Lawrence Gap, a soft bend in the ocean lined with open-air bars and romantic restaurants and cooled by a soft breeze coming off the Caribbean across the street.
At Sweet Potatoes, I sat upstairs in what seemed like a tree house and had little bitty pile of white fish in a red tomato sauce.
My hotel once served it fried. And at Sunbury Plantation House, on an old Barbadian sugar estate, I had it lightly breaded. Despite the fish’s size, when left alone, it’s surprisingly flavorful and dense.
One night, I went to the heart of flying fish country: the Oikins Fish Market, a collection of shacks with picnic tables where you get the freshest fish in Barbados in the simplest setting on the island.
At Uncle George Fish Net Grill, I watched a woman in a black hairnet take giant tongs and a spatula and put four flying fish 5 inches long on a grill with fire shooting into the air.
The fish came out fat and fresh with tell-tale black, charcoal lines running diagonally along the side. With delectable seasonings, it was as good as in any high-end restaurant found in a Caribbean guidebook.
When I asked the woman in the hairnet about the seasonings, she said with a knowing smile, “Can’t tell you.” So the next day I woke at dawn and walked back to the fish market to see old Mr. Bourne, who’d been fishing here for 42 years.
He had just come in from a catch and said that on good days his nets can catch up to 40,000 flying fish. Then I asked a very intelligent question: How do you fillet a fish only 5 or 6 inches long?
He pointed to the nearby cleaning station where I saw a young woman fillet a fish in 30 seconds. Her hands flew so fast I thought I was wok side at Hibachi Grill. Wilma Hutchinson was born and raised just up the street from the fish market, meaning filleting a flying fish (say that after three rum punches) is as natural as tying her shoes.
She slowly showed me how. You cut it open, cut the bones off the back, the middle and the side, and what’s left is a nice, rectangle fillet about 5 inches long.
“It’s very easy to cook,” she said. “It doesn’t take very long, and it doesn’t take a lot of seasoning. It has a natural taste.”
She suggested I try it with lime, salt and Bajan hot sauce. OK, I’m convinced. Flying fish fly. I promise I won’t ask how.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
