Burley_Boy
29-10-2007, 06:52 PM
Had some rellies visiting and they wanted to get some fish n chips at the local fishmongers right by my boat ramp in Biggera Waters, I looked at the "menu" and said whiting would be nice, 6x whiting fillets for $8.
Picked up my little box and wandereed over to the rest of the family sitting at the picknick tables.
Opened up the box and found 6x fried "fillets" dwarfed by the two slices of lemon. I had decided on the no chips option so it looked spartan to say the least, everyone else laughed>:(
These would be about 5-6cm in length and that was to be my lunch... 6x small yabbies would have more meat on them.
I picked up the box and leaving it nice and opened and stormed past the people waiting to get served, nicely showing them my opened box and declaring that I expect to be served fish and not undersized bait.
Poor girl serving just pointed at the owner and said she just worked there, the boss lady came over and declared that the fish were certainly not undersized and that the "local" whiting were very small and that frying them caused them to shrink considerably. She took me over to the fridge to show me a slab of frozen whiting which were difficult to differentiate as they were all frozen together in a slab declaring that that was local whiting. What is 'local' I don't know but I said I had better go get my own Whiting and she promptly declared that if I did I should come and see her as this was the best she could get... As if I would::)
So how small would a 23cm filleted Whiting actually end up if fried? If it's 5cm then I apologise for getting shirty. I don't think I've ever filleted a Whiting that size.
To be fair the owner quickly tore shreds off the young girl serving saying she should not sell the whiting fried as they shrink too much and then she tossed on a decent fillet for me of something I can't remember. Great working atmosphere when I left:-*
As a beside I find quite a few non local fish frames with heads on dumped at the ramp regularly as well, that the pelicans don't even want and the bait fish seem to ignore they're usually quite white in the flesh when I see them I just wonder what the story is there and if its the cool thing to do.
Certainly not the nice thing to see at the low tide so I usually toss them deeper.
Picked up my little box and wandereed over to the rest of the family sitting at the picknick tables.
Opened up the box and found 6x fried "fillets" dwarfed by the two slices of lemon. I had decided on the no chips option so it looked spartan to say the least, everyone else laughed>:(
These would be about 5-6cm in length and that was to be my lunch... 6x small yabbies would have more meat on them.
I picked up the box and leaving it nice and opened and stormed past the people waiting to get served, nicely showing them my opened box and declaring that I expect to be served fish and not undersized bait.
Poor girl serving just pointed at the owner and said she just worked there, the boss lady came over and declared that the fish were certainly not undersized and that the "local" whiting were very small and that frying them caused them to shrink considerably. She took me over to the fridge to show me a slab of frozen whiting which were difficult to differentiate as they were all frozen together in a slab declaring that that was local whiting. What is 'local' I don't know but I said I had better go get my own Whiting and she promptly declared that if I did I should come and see her as this was the best she could get... As if I would::)
So how small would a 23cm filleted Whiting actually end up if fried? If it's 5cm then I apologise for getting shirty. I don't think I've ever filleted a Whiting that size.
To be fair the owner quickly tore shreds off the young girl serving saying she should not sell the whiting fried as they shrink too much and then she tossed on a decent fillet for me of something I can't remember. Great working atmosphere when I left:-*
As a beside I find quite a few non local fish frames with heads on dumped at the ramp regularly as well, that the pelicans don't even want and the bait fish seem to ignore they're usually quite white in the flesh when I see them I just wonder what the story is there and if its the cool thing to do.
Certainly not the nice thing to see at the low tide so I usually toss them deeper.