A Hard Day’s Night: A Day with a French Fishmonger

It’s 3 am in the small town of Brionne, in Normandy. I park my car near the ornate mairie, or city hall, and emerge into the inky, silent darkness wondering if I’m in the right place. Everything feels socked in with sleep.

I think I hear sounds from a distance. Following them, I turn a corner, round a bend and nearly fall into a hive of near-silent, floodlit activity. What relief. I’ve found what I’m looking for, a fishmonger and his crew at work. After years of wondering what is involved with all the gorgeous seafood I see at my weekly farmers’ market, I’ve come to spend a day with Bruno Richomme, the fishmonger I frequent, to find out.

What I witness in this chilly middle of the night is like a pantomime show of strongmen, hefting boxes and bags of seafood, much of it still pulsing with life, communicating quietly because this isn’t an industrial park but an ordinary neighborhood. The only reason the business is here is because it began here some 30 years ago when zoning didn’t matter and the scale was small. Now it’s one of the biggest fish businesses in the region, and six out of seven days a week these men are here, shifting the tons of seafood that someone else — up even earlier and braving even colder temperatures — has fished from the sea and delivered.

After quiet greetings I dodge the crew and peek into bags holding sea snails and mussels. I lift the lid on Styrofoam boxes to see floppy whole hake, rigid sardines, thick-scaled herring, silvery blue mackerel. Yet another box holds slimy skate wings. Slime is, I learn, a good thing, for it indicates freshness.

I recognize the men working here from the market, and I know them all to be loud wisecrackers. Now they’re silent, bent on getting the tons of seafood on the pavement into the waiting vehicles, which will speed away into the darkness along curving country roads. Richomme, whose business is called Chez Bulot, has stands at thirteen different farmers’ markets each week, and he also supplies restaurants, seafood shops and supermarkets throughout the region.

There isn’t a shred of romanticism to this work so far, but I’m already enchanted, as if these men who’ve left their warm beds are doing this just for me. In a sense they are, as I’m a loyal customer. I can’t wait to get to the market, but before that I’m eager to find out what delivering seafood really means. To that end I climb into one of the vans with Christian Lainé, a wiry, sandy-haired man who has been in fish for the past five years. “I used to be a baker — early mornings don’t scare me,” he says with a laugh as we speed off. It’s 4 am, and our first stop is a nearby Leclerc, a large supermarket.

Lainé checks his watch. “We’re too early, let’s get a coffee,” he says, and I wonder if he’s mad. It’s just after 4 am in the middle of the Norman countryside. A coffee? I needn’t have doubted. Around the next bend is an old-fashioned roadside auberge whose windows are lit with golden warmth. We pull up, walk in, and within minutes are sipping café express and sharing conversation with the chic patronne.

We’re soon back in the truck and on our way. We’ll wind up at the market, which today is in the town of L’Aigle, but it will take us a good two hours to get there, and we’ll cover some 95 miles before we do. After Leclerc our next stop is a gorgeous village where we slide through streets just barely wide enough for the truck, and pull up behind the floodlit church. Lainé stashes boxes of seafood behind an oversized garbage can. I’m shocked.

“I have to hide the fish there,” he says with a shake of his head. “It’s crazy, but the proprietor doesn’t want to give us a key. It will sit there for an hour before he arrives.”

We stop at a fish shop where the proprietor and Lainé share a smoke, then we’re back on the road. Two more stops in two different villages then we strike out for L’Aigle, now only about 40 miles distant. The roads are empty, the sky still black. Lainé keeps up a steady patter about fish, the market, the people.

Before I know it we’ve arrived at a small, tree-lined square at the back of L’Aigle’s main square. “We love this market,” Lainé says. “They put all the fishmongers together and we have fun stealing customers from each other.”

I’m pondering this method of marketing as I climb out of the truck. It’s that hour just before daylight when everything is slightly blurry. The fish stand is lit, and under the lights are Pascal Gosse, Richomme’s right hand man, and Béatrice Caron, who has worked for the company for 25 years, along with Guillaume Baron, a 16-year-old apprentice. They are filling up tables with ice and arranging a briny world on top. Unlike earlier this morning there is much laughter and conversation, as colleagues from the various seafood operations insult each other with gusto.

Every available hand is busy shucking scallops and I ask to help. Pascal hands me a knife and an apron, and pretty soon I’m one of the crew, slicing off top shells, leaving the sweet, still moving muscle on the bottom shell. Until today I’d thought I was accomplished; I see the error of my presumption, as I shuck one to everyone else’s half dozen.

Seven thirty is coffee break time, and we snake through the square around paella and roast chicken stands, clothing, cheese counters and butcher trucks to a friendly café where coffee comes without being ordered. After a second round for everyone it’s back to work, where early-bird customers already await.

Pascal, crumpled cap atop tousled hair, apron enveloping his ample form, turns on — hawking at the top of his lungs as he laughs, jokes, and charms the customers into buying twice what they thought they needed. Meanwhile, Richomme has arrived and is tying on his floor-length apron as he greets customers. I step back to watch this crew ease into their public personas. It’s 8:30 am, midday for all of them, and the market has just begun.

The next five hours go by in a blur of customers, most of whom I am introduced to with a story or a whisper to explain who they are in the vast society of Chez Bulot. It’s a familial kind of business, and Richomme knows the backstory of almost every client.

I meet Marcel, a rakish artist who buys liberally and speaks of his upcoming car trip to Sudan. A shabbily dressed man and woman amble heavily up and are greeted by all at Chez Bulot, then left alone as they peer at everything on offer. Richomme — whose eyes are everywhere as he shucks scallops, makes change, shakes hands, kisses children, asks after the mother-in-law — spies them. He quietly turns to his truck, takes out a large box of yesterday’s mackerel and sets it on the ground. When the couple makes its way to him he greets them warmly and discreetly hands over the box. Hands are shaken all around and the couple ambles off.

“He’s a potato farmer who lives with his five sisters. They sometimes have a child with them, we don’t dare ask whose it is, and they always take our day-old mackerel,” Richomme explains. “It’s perfectly good, they love it, they bring me potatoes…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, interrupted by a woman who wants ten pounds of scallops, shucked now, so she can run home and freeze them. Others crowd up to the counter to ask about the cod; request that their salmon be filleted, scaled, cut into serving pieces; wonder at how long they should cook the snaky-skinned shark; whether the sardines are best grilled or pan-fried. Each question is met with a careful response as the crew simultaneously cleans, shucks, rinses and removes scales on a makeshift table with a large bucket of fresh water nearby, for dipping the knife between jobs.

By 10 am the stand is choked with customers. Pascal keeps up his lusty patter; Lainé has grown silent with concentration; young Guillaume sticks to selling scallops, and Madame Caron is the busiest with the knife. But Richomme is the one customers want, and he’s generous with his attention as he works faster than the rest combined.

The clock strikes noon and the crowd begins to thin. There are still plenty of customers, but the fishmongers are now back to insulting each other. From start to finish this job is just what it seems — backbreaking work in conditions most people would hate. It is a cold, wet service job, filled with slime, flying scales, and the occasional bad-tempered customer. It appears to be completely compelling as well, rich as it is with camaraderie. And it is rife with tender vignettes like the potato farmer and his sister, or the little girl who is given a handful of her favorite shrimp, “for your aperitif,” or the father hoping to serve his family lobster in celebration of his son’s new job who silently quakes at the price. It suddenly drops just for him, just for that moment, because Richomme has taken it all in.

An hour later the tables are cleaned, the leftovers are carefully packed back into the trucks, which one by one drive away. I get a ride back with Richomme, who talks about this work that consumes his life. “It’s full of stories, it’s cold, it can drive you crazy with the hours,” he says. “But then there’s that one small thing, that one little story that brings it all into focus.”

We pull up where I met them all at 3 am. It’s 3 pm now and Richomme’s day is far from over as he prepares to shuck more scallops, ready a banquet, order what he needs for tomorrow. He shakes my hand absently as his cell phone rings.

There’s more I want to know, but no time to ask. I’ll catch him tomorrow at my market, where I’ll arrive at 8:30 am, more than five hours into his workday.

It’s all in the life of a French fishmonger.

 

SCALLOPS WITH GREEN TEA CREAM

COQUILLES SAINT JACQUES A LA CREME DE THE VERT

 

Susan Herrmann Loomis teaches cooking classes in Normandy and Paris. The latest of her nine books is Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin (William Morrow, 2006). Susan’s website

Originally published in the January 2010 issue of France Today.