Côte d'Opale

Smoked herring on the Opal Coast

The fish that fed this coast for six centuries, and is still smoked today

A plate of smoked fish — Photo: Dana Moos, source, CC BY 2.0

The essentials

Where: Côte d'Opale
How long: One hour
Price: Visits vary by smokehouse, sales on site

Saur, kipper, bouffi
Year-round
Autumn for the season
Take some home

Before tourism, there was herring. It made the fortunes of Boulogne, Étaples and Dunkirk, was fished for months off Iceland, and is still smoked in coresses — the tall brick chimneys where the fish hangs above a sawdust fire.

In November, when the fish moves back towards the North Sea, every port on the coast celebrates it. The rest of the year, you buy it from the smokers.

Saur, kipper, bouffi: not the same thing

Hareng saur Salted then cold-smoked for several days. Firm, strongly flavoured. Eaten as fillets in oil, or in a warm potato salad.
The kipper Split open, gutted, salted and smoked for only a few hours. Milder, softer: cooked in a pan or in the oven.
The bouffi Smoked whole, without being split, and only briefly. The lightest of the three, and the most fragile to keep.

What you see inside a smokehouse

Herring strung by the gills onto spits, hung by the hundred in a room black with soot, above a beech-sawdust fire that must never flame. The colour and the flavour come from that, and nowhere else — no dye, no flavouring.

The smell soaks into everything. It's a short visit, and one you don't forget.

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