Eating Belgium

Where I grew up, herrings came packed in a brine that tasted like sweetened battery acid, so when, on a warm June evening in Antwerp, Belgium, my Flemish friend Tony insisted that I try the maatjes herring, I was skeptical. He took me to the tiny Restaurant Maritime, at the foot of the Suikerui near the river Scheldt. We sat at a table on the terrace by the sidewalk, where we basked in the warm evening light and listened to the calls of the gulls drifting up from the river. There we were served plates of seemingly raw herring filets, garnished with sliced onion, hard boiled eggs, parsley, boiled potatoes, and dark buttered bread. My friend explained that the fish were actually lightly cured, virgin herring. By that he meant that they were young fish that had never spawned. Called Hollandse Nieuw, they are actually caught in Danish and Norwegian waters between late May and early July. They are gutted and cured in a light salt brine with the liver and pancreas left in to provide enzymes that assist in the process. Traditionally, this is done in oak casks. The cure lasts for five days, after which the maatjes are filleted, skinned, and rushed to the market. The result is a perfect miniature filet with a fresh, briny flavor and an unctuous texture. When washed down with a glass of Antwerp’s signature reddish-amber De Koninck beer, they are the flavor of early summer on the North Sea coast.

The maatjes season is celebrated throughout northern Europe, but nowhere with greater enthusiasm than in Belgium and the Netherlands, where restaurants proclaim their arrival on signboards and banners. The arrival of the maatjes marks the start of the long days of midsummer, when you can sit in a café on the cathedral square at eleven o’clock at night with a bright sky overhead and enough natural light to read a newspaper. This is a marked contrast to midwinter when the sun does not come up until mid-morning and goes down halfway through the afternoon. In these northern latitudes, summer evenings are savored by couples strolling along the avenues and enjoying the flavors of this short season, at tables set up on the sidewalks around every square. This is the time for fresh asparagus and wild strawberries and all the other summer produce that seems to appear suddenly in the markets and just as suddenly to disappear when the season is done. So it is with maatjes, and so I want to be there, on the Suikerui, in Antwerp, in June, to eat another plate of herring.