Late one afternoon, near Knife River, Minnesota, I came upon a beat-up tavern with a worn sign promising smoked fish. The place was closed—it looked like for days—but I managed to raise Betty Kendall, the proprietor, who lived next door in a trailer. The airless and dark bar, redolent of years of cigarettes and spilled beer, was abundant with reds—carpets, chairs, curtains—and hanging baseball caps and dozens of representations of Betty Boop, a character from an era Betty Kendall shared. Also a sign: To hell with the dog—beware the owner. By the look of things, I thought I should heed it. Diffidently, I asked my question, “Any ciscoes?”
She said, “How many do you want?” Half expecting a laugh of derision to chase me out, I said, “Three or four—enough to make a dinner.” She disappeared into what I took for a closet and returned with several sheets of newspaper cradling golden ciscoes. She wrapped them. I asked were they fresh. “These were smoked yesterday at four o’clock. They come from over on the Wisconsin side.” I recited a nutshell rendition of my quest, and she said about her late husband, Smokey, “He used to eat three or four while he was smoking them. You would have thought they were popcorn. Now, only a couple of fishermen in Knife River still go after them.”
When I left, my wrapped ciscoes snug under my arm as if rare first editions of books I’d long sought, I noticed across the road another fish stand, this one shut down; but only a little farther on was yet another. I was in a hotbed of smokeries. Russ Kendall, brother of Smokey, had built his place as a proper market, small but with appropriate glass-fronted cases, refrigeration, and a happy spread of smoked fish. He knew the cisco story through the whole of the 20th century, from abundance, when a cisco stand popped up about every 15 miles, to the near scarcity I’d been encountering. A local Indian had shown Kendall’s father how to build a smokehouse. He said, “People don’t fish them so much now because ciscoes are the most trouble and least money, but I’ll tell you this: They’re good enough that, years ago, when this place was just a roadside stand and our catch was out in the open air before government regulations, a cow wandered up one morning and ate a couple ciscoes right off the table. Later the owner complained his milk tasted fishy.”
That evening I unwrapped packages from three different vendors and began a celebration of a memory, a fulfillment of what Lake Superior had written in me some half century earlier. On the table lay slender, streamlined creatures, fish of classic lines, their round eyes blanched from the oven. I cut along the back and pulled free the scaled skin once nearly luminescent, now turned golden by smoke. Flesh, the color of parchment, lifted easily from insubstantial bones almost invisible. The ciscoes—lake herrings—were so delicate I wondered how they could survive in the dark and cold, eat-and-be-eaten deeps in which they spent most of their lives. They were tender and moist—“oily,” people say on the North Shore—and reportedly rich in salutary omega-3 fatty acids. Their sweet delectability made finishing one almost a regret; even having a dozen others iced down, enough for several more lunches and dinners, didn’t relieve my sense of impending cisco deprivation. But, beyond that, in mind was a wobbly café, a smiling father freed from a steering wheel, a smudgy window opening to a lake reaching out till it disappeared in distant fog. I felt I’d followed a small, silvery fish into a long corridor back toward 1949.
The Details
With its remarkable views of Lake Superior, the stretch of U.S. 61 from Duluth to Grand Marais is like a midwestern version of California’s Pacific Coast Highway. Watch the waves from a table at the New Scenic Café (5461 N. Shore Scenic Dr., Duluth; 218-525-6274), where a modest exterior belies the ambitious cuisine within. Everyone with a cabin “up north” knows to stop at Betty’s Pies (1633 Hwy. 61, Two Harbors; 218-834-3367) for fresh-baked varieties like blackberry peach and spicy walnut raisin. For smoked fish, try Mel’s Fish House (223 Hwy. 61, Knife River; 218-834-5858) or Russ Kendall’s Smoked Fish House (149 Hwy. 61, Knife River; 218-834-5995). Overnighters will want to check out the lake homes at Superior Shores Resort—most with kitchen, fireplace, and deck (1521 Superior Shores Dr., Two Harbors; 800-242-1988; $49 to $439). Farther north, the historic Naniboujou Lodge (20 Naniboujou Trail, Grand Marais; 218-387-2688; $79 to $99) is known for its unique architecture and Cree Indian-inspired décor. —Nichol Nelson
Pinterest
