Death Of The Fish Meze

‘TUNA: One of the largest of the migrating fish, the Tuna frequents northern waters during the summer months. In winter, however, it travels down to the Mediterranean and remains there, living at a great depth. In spring it comes in to the shore, spawns and departs in shoals for the north. The flesh is both tasty and plentiful, but is only to be found tinned.’

Excerpt taken from Fish Of Greece, by George Sfikas 1999

The above may sound sad and pathetic, but how true we know it to be.

Like most Mediterranean peoples, the Cypriots are great seafood lovers. And though our fishermen are not dredging up dolphin-friendly tins of diet tuna, neither are they hooking the real thing in great numbers.

The Med is quite simply over fished. Any attempt at regulating fishing quotas, net mesh sizes, hooks, lines, sinkers has been poorly enforced for too long now.

Biologists tell us that big fish like tuna and swordfish, due to their place in the food chain, carry more accumulated mercury than you can shake a ship’s thermometer at. That, however is not the reason it is appearing less and less at the end of the fish meze now is it?Paphian fish restaurant owners have been, recently, lamenting the loss of a fair proportion of their weekend Nicosia trade. At only 20 minutes from the capital, Kyrenia has drawn away the customers, who prefer to eat by the picturesque harbour. Though unconfirmed, the Express understands that a lot of the fish up there comes frozen from Zygi.

Frozen or not, the contents of the meze, both in quantity and quality have taken a bit of a nosedive no matter where you decide to fillet your fish.

Paphos is becoming notorious for its hiked up prices, closely followed, incidentally by our friends in Kyrenia. Pissouri compares well with most and Limassol offers a good range, from budget taverna to very expensive international cuisine.

Ironically, Cyprus’ saving grace is its farmed fish. Delicious bream and bass (Tsipoura and Lavraki) are always available fresh, and now crown the meze the way a freshly caught snapper or grouper used to, in the days that there was more to see underwater than a jellyfish, an Arabic newspaper and a kilometre of orange twine. Unlike the farmed salmon in Scotland, these two are safe, nutritious and very cheap.
Swordfish sometimes makes a cameo on the table, though in increasingly invisible amounts and if you go to a truly good taverna, soupies kathistes, squid cooked in its own ink, red wine and cinnamon may also lighten up your dinner.

Apart from these traditional dishes, frozen red mullet from Thailand, crabs that have stepped on anti-personnel mines and landed in the deep fryer and even more deeply fried sole, fresh from Iceland (but not the country) are now the protagonists in the majority of our fish tavernas.
Not just tourist-oriented tavernas, either. Locals complain about the price and the quality of fish, and for good reason, too.
So, what has changed things? Is it pressure from the tourist? Do the Brits want everything deep fried? Do the Germans only like crabs cooked to the consistency of bison hooves?
Are the ingredients expensive? Frozen Thai red mullet are not. They may not measure up to rare, fresh, local produce, but they could be treated with more respect than the culinary equivalent of nuclear fission.
Does a good meze take too long to prepare? Who’s in a hurry?

To give restaurateurs their due, good food does take time as well as skill. But that’s not what the meze was about. It was about eating small amounts of whatever was fresh, appetising, ready and went well with the younger Cypriot wines. If, over time we sneaked in a few imported, frozen prawns because the Cypriot ones warranted a mini mortgage before ordering, then so be it. At least they were grilled, sprinkled with olive oil, sea salt and parsley – not coated in village flour and pan-fried into oblivion.
The salad, always fresh in Cyprus, has never needed anointing with ‘crab-sticks’. (‘Crap sticks’ if their contents were to be more truthfully described).

Cyprus will never have the rich choice of fresh seafood of France, or even better, Scotland, nor will it ever come close to the cuisine of Spain, but in the meze it had a humble offering that was enjoyed by a long table full of loud relatives, bewildered guests, messy kids and end-of-shift waiters. The transition from very slow to fast food has been insidious, but there is still time to fix it, before it all goes wrong.