Hampton Style - June 13, 2008

When the opportunity arises to revisit favored meals from my childhood, it has been my experience that they mostly taste better in the memory than on the plate.

Apart from the obvious sophistication of the palate, the primary cause for this is usually binary: it's either that foods from our early days are so heavily seasoned with nostalgia they're forever rendered delicious or they simply don't make 'em like they used to. Regretfully-and depending on which continent you consume them-when it comes to fish and chips, it tends to be a bit of both.

In my mind, fish and chips and the seaside are inextricably fastened; I only have to think about this salty fare and I can hear surf and seagulls. That is proper fish and chips-the traditional English lardy version, deep-fried till disfigured and lumpy but gorgeously unctuous-are best consumed straight from the paper while looking out to sea. It may seem a twisted logic, then, it was in a land of gray rain and soggy mists that this meal first let off steam. But even for these mildewed folk, fish and chips and the sea is like fondue and swingers parties (but with ocean breezes rather than incense); one without the other and the table seems only half-set.

Fish and chips was the original belly-warmer of the English working class. The advent of North Sea trawl fishing in the mid-1800s threw up the offal fish of the ocean, and this indiscriminate catch was soon battered, fried and married to chips as the first fast-food of the dark ages. From the deepest, dankest parts of the Kingdom to London's East End, fish and chips became a cheap comfort to the workers of mines, mills, factories, and their kin. A meal that defined a class; it was made to be heavy, to smother deep-set hunger, and ease dampness and chest rattles. It helped that battered fish and chips was also delicious. These bottom-wrung sorrows, once dulled by lard, were mostly then dampened by lager-a "fish supper" was a Friday-evening favorite with the Catholics, which meant you had Saturday to sleep the revelry off.

Purist renditions of English fish and chips are an ugly affair. The best slabs of fish are those deep-fried in beef dripping until the batter resembles a bad sunburn-lumpy, blistering and deeply colored. And using beef fat to fry is imperative to the end result. The beef dripping is not just a boon to flavor; only animal fat boils at the extreme temperature needed to impenetrably seal the batter, ensuring the fish inside cooks in its juice rather than absorbing the oil. (Originally upon eating, it was the fashion to discard the batter as merely a louty carapace, frying to a light crunch while the fish was safely steaming. But taste soon dictated, and rather than tearing it away to reveal the white, pearlescent morsel, it was soon realized that a crisp and precisely cooked batter was a fitting complement to the moist meat inside.) The traditional "chipped" potatoes should be hand-cut, misshapen customers, cooked till crispy, golden and floury (extra points for remaining skin), and it's all to be accompanied by lashings of salt, lemon wedges and malt vinegar.

Fish and chips done well is a guilty pleasure (these days we tend to treat our seafood and bodies with a tad more respect), yet on modern menus it shall remain, heavy and unadulterated. Innovation here is indeed a burden.

"Seaside culture" can present a contradiction in terms in the sunniest climes, but nowhere is this illustrated more vividly than the coastal resort towns of England. The old-time faded-postcard hoopla of carnival rides, boardwalk amusements, puppet shows and cotton candy were basically a lot of tacky trimmings to distract from a lack of decent weather. The sun gave light but no heat, the beaches were cobblestoned and the sea was the color of dishwater. To my admiration, these were people with hard lives on holiday, and they made a professional sport of being jolly. Their beloved mainstay meal traveled too; at the seaside there were thick pieces of fresh-caught cod or haddock, so the batter wasn't overdone, the flavor was better, and at the sea it became food for enjoyment rather than endurance.

Luckily for me, my early youth was spent beside the Sydney seaside, so my childhood memories revolve around warmth and waves and idyll. As a young connoisseur of instant gratification and anything not home-cooked, fish and chips at the beach was a meal from the gods. Wet and wily, I'd maneuver the surf for hours, negotiating waves and brotherly dunkings, then, just before noon, become bat-sensitive to the movements of my sand-lounging father, who would rise according to his own tidal pull and slowly amble up the beach to the fish and chip shop. When he appeared back on the top of the esplanade, paper-wrapped bundle under his arm, there was a one-minute window to catch a wave to shore, with three older brothers grappling alongside, where you'd hit the beach ravenous and running in an iron-man challenge to the lunch parcel. Sliding in knees first to the sand, we would fight like seagulls around a chip for pole position near the golden mound of food, then eat with a stop-watch frenzy. Survival of the fastest in your programming, you'd bravely dig your hand into a pile of piping-hot chips in the hopes of hitting a piece of battered fish and not a grasping hand from the other side. The memory loop of devouring this meal, simultaneously nibbling and blowing, amid shrieking bathers, surf and bone-warming sun, before running full-bellied back to the sea and an inevitable cramp, is a salty one. For me, in this playground of sunshine and satisfaction, these were my better-than-lobster-salad days.

Summer in the Hamptons, too, is a seductive mix of radiant warmth, seascapes and breezy unforced leisure-hedonism at your fingertips. And unlike the British resort towns with their dried-up economies and abandoned piers, tumbleweeds will never blow through this town. An enclave of distinct water-lapped destinations, our coastal community here will continue to feed itself, nourished by tourists, wealth and weather.