European Seafood Adventure - England & Iceland

DAY 1 (to DAY 1 1/2)

I was looking forward  to my first trip to Europe in over a year with enthusiasm but also a bit of trepidation.  It was going to be a whirlwind trip  to say the least, but I've never been to Norway, Iceland or the Netherlands.. 

5 countries, 5 airlines, 4 time zones, and 11 flights, all in only 6 days!  Hey it wasn't going to be much different from my Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama trip to the shrimp and cobia farms earlier this year.   I chalked it up to another adventure to learn as much as I could about sourcing fantastic seafood for Wegmans and making new partnerships and friends.  

The focus of this trip was to see my first shrimp processing plant in action near Birmingham, England (I've visited shrimp farms before but the shrimp were still growing out and too small for processing and still in ponds).  Then we're off to Reykjavik, Iceland where they have some of the most sustainable and largest biomasses of Atlantic seafood landing daily;  cod, haddock, hake, ocean perch to name a few, I'm sure I'll find more.   Only a day there and then to the fjords of Norway up north to our European Union certified Organic Salmon farm.  The farm is near the arctic circle, the farthest north I've ever traveled.  Now that it's the summer season, it stays light until 10:00 pm.   Hopefully we'll also get to  see the northern lights if we stay up late enough. Finally, a stop in Amsterdam to see some famous European seafood markets for ideas and inspiration.  

My traveling companion Steve and I started our journey with bad luck from the start.  We had a freelance photographer joining us the entire trip, (John who is actually a friend of mine from 20 years ago).  When we told him we weren't checking bags, just using a carryon for the week, John decided to take an earlier flight to New York as he had to check his photography equipment and was concerned about the short connection time to make the overseas flight.  Good thing for him he did.  He arrived in New York 4 hours ahead of us with 3 hours to make the connecting flight.  Steve and I were to arrive 3 hours later, with 1 hour to make the connection.

The travel gods were not smiling at us.  We boarded our flight  in  Rochester on time, but we sat at the gate in Rochester for 35 minutes before taking off.  The pilot announced there was too much ground traffic at JFK and we needed to hold there (uh oh). 

Once we took off it still looked pretty good to be on time, until we physically felt the plane slow down and start flying in circles for another 40 minutes.  Finally on the ground in New York, I called John who was just boarding the flight, only 3 gates away from where we would be disembarking.  we still had a chance!
That is until we sat on the tarmac at JFK for another 20 minutes before we pulled up to the gate.  We walked off our Jet Blue flight exactly 5 minutes after our connecting Aer Lingus fliight departed with John.  We could've almost run after it and caught it still (at least I could have). 

Now we had a major dilemma.   Our photographer was on the flight and our schedule was to be picked up in Birmingham at 7:30 am the next morning.  There was no way possible looking at the options that were now available to us and John had no contact information on who was picking us up.

Thankfully a quick call to our travel agency and they rebooked us on the next best possible itinerary, getting into Birmingham at 11:00 am the next day, only 3 and a half hours late.

So Steve and I made the best of things and sat down to a great Tapas dinner, of white anchovies, large garlic grilled shrimp, cockle clams, spare ribs, and blue fin tuna ceviche (which I pointed out to the waitress and chef was yellow fin and we argued about . I pulled out my business card and a photo of a blue fin chu toro saku block taken in my back yard and pointed out the differences between that and what was served)

We made the flight and after a quick 1 hour morning layover in Dublin, arrived in Birmingham at 11:00 am Monday morning.  There was no need to go through customs since we did this in Ireland,  (one benefit of the European Union) and finally met up with John.  

Meeting our driver was a different story.   We had emailed our contacts we would be 3 hours late and our new flight information.  We were told our driver would be standing by where you come through baggage claim with a sign that said "Welcome Wegmans".   Lot's of drivers were at the gate, but none with our sign. It took awhile for my phone to get service and I finally got a hold of our contact and described where we were and what I was wearing.  Thirty seconds later some jolly old Englishman tapped me on the shoulder and asked in a fabulous British accent "Are you Mr.  Wagner?"  After confirming I was he told me he was George and was our driver and held up a sign that said simply "Welcome".  We must have walked past him 10 times.  

George drove us the 40 minute ride to our appointment Sea Farms in a Jaguar.  John called dibs on the front seat and tried to get into the driver's side (cars over here drive on the right side of the road and the driver sits on the right) giving George a hearty British laugh.                

It was now 20 hours after waking up and we made it to our first appointment of the week.  Sea Farms is a major cooked shrimp supplier to us sourcing shrimp from Thailand,  Indonesia, Honduras and Belize.  They gave us great insights to the shrimp industry, and the current state of flux with what's happening with supply and costs.  After more than a year into the horrible epidemic of Early Mortality Syndrome which has manifested itself into the worst supply and highest costs for shrimp in history this was very helpful.   They also provided insight into retail trends in the United Kingdom of the major retailers,  Marks & Spener,  Tesco, Waitrose, Asda, Co-op, Aldi and others.  

We did a quick tour of their processing and cooking facilities and were very impressed.  Every production process has it's own dedicated and isolated room where you have to put on a whole new pair of boots, lab coat, multiple colored hair nets to identify that you're in the correct room,  and then wash and sanitize your hands 2 times before entering.  Food safety is very strict and to the highest standards I have seen in all the facilities I've visited.

After the tour we had a great seafood lunch of mostly shrimp prepared any way you can think of, but also squid, lobster, scallops and salads.  The most I could eat was just a forkful of about 75% of the items there were so many, all excellently prepared and displayed by their Executive Chef.

Since we were late from our first flights we had to cut the meeting short to get back to the airport.  Funny (not really) to think we traveled for 40 hours straight for a 4 hour meeting but saw and experienced so much in the process.
Another airplane with a layover in Amsterdam (my new most favorite airport on the planet with a cool champagne bar) and then on to Iceland

So far our trip has consisted of:

5 flights 

4 airlines (Jet Blue, Aer Lingus, Flybe, Iceland Air) Yes Flybe is an airline, I don't recommend it

5 countries (USA, Ireland, England, Amsterdam, Iceland)

5 cities (New York, Dublin, Birmingham, Amsterdam, Reykjavik)

4 time zones

The only dinners and drinks we have had have been in airports or on airplanes. 

Now it's Tuesday morning August 5th 12:30 am and just landed in Keflavik, Iceland (8:30 PM Monday in Rochester).  The temperature is dramatically cooler here but welcome.  Saw the sun just setting as we were landing.  I'm looking more forward to finally sleeping in a bed for 2 nights in a row and a shower  now more than going out on fishing boats.  Will blog some more tomorrow.

DAY 2
Woke up in Reykjavik with the sunrise streaming through my window at 4:30 am.  I promptly shut the curtains and went back to bed.  Two hours of sleep after 40 hours without a bed wasn't going to cut it today.  Still 6:45am came early to me for a change.  We headed out of the hotel and the fishing boats.  Now that it is light out you can see how beautiful and contrasting the landscape is here.  Off in the distance you can see the steep and contouring mountains that look daunting to climb but I'd love to try.  In between them and the city it is completely flat with very little vegetation and even less trees.  Lots of rocks everywhere jutting out into the streets, all of it pitch black lava and blending right in.
The entire population of Iceland is 380,000 citizens of which 170,000 live in Reykjavik.
Reykjavik is very clean and modern.   A few things stand out very prominently on our drive through the downtown.

• I can't pronounce any of the street names with all of the consonants in the language.
• There are very few, if any, wooden houses or buildings.
• There are no squirrels and no dogs (but lots of cats)
• You can't really tell you are downtown in a major city as there are very few tall buildings and no skyscrapers at all.

We visited our partner, Sturmur seafoods and their processing facility on the coast first.  They are allocated an annual quota by species from the government on how much fish they are allowed.  Currently they have 1500 tons of cod allocated for 2014.  This was established in June as it is every year by the Marine Research Institute of Iceland based on the estimated size and health of the biomass.  The MRI makes recommendations to the government who then establishes the quotas.  There has been  a slow increase in cod stocks over the past few years, but not enough to make up for the reduction from the east coast of the USA.  The facility was in operation, but scaled down as Iceland just came off a national holiday weekend (their version of Labor Day) so the boats didn't go out on Monday and were out now so not much to cut today.  Still what we saw was very modernized and quite impressive.
As with every seafood operation I've visited, it is very labor intensive with many workers, lots of ice and lots of water.  There were more automated fish cutting equipment here than I've ever seen, with 2 automated lines for cutting whole fish and 2 laser portioning machines (of which I was relieved were the same model as the one we just purchased).
After the tour we went on line where we could see by satellite exactly where all the boats were fishing at that precise time and follow the route that they had taken to get to their current position.   The plant is able to schedule based on where  the boats are and when they will come in.
We then went down to the docks and had a tour of a brand new long line fishing boat who's maiden voyage was going to be on Friday.  It was very modern and impressive and the cleanest fishing vessel I've ever been on.  It still had that "new boat smell"!
From the docks we went to see some Icelandic local supermarkets.  The stores were all a combination of food and general merchandise, even clothing.  The concept was like a Super Walmart store but much smaller and much more upscale and a larger focus on fresh foods.  Everything was priced in Kronas the currency of Iceland so it was hard to determine what the costs were compared to the USA but it seemed like everything was much more expensive.
There were a lot of indigenous foods here also, like puffin meat, whale meat, and reindeer meat as well as a huge assortment  of dried fish.
John had never had dried fish before so Ivar (our host's son who was guiding us around) bought a couple of packages.  Steve and I both declined (we knew what we were missing) and the moment the cellophane package was opened and the smell hit our nose we were glad we did.  No sooner than when John took his first ever bite of  what is very popular in Iceland, Ivar exclaimed that "this one is actually not that good" and John looked like Tom Hanks in BIG when he ate the beluga caviar.  He couldn't get it out of his mouth fast enough!

Onto our next fish processing house from there further up the coast.  This drive was incredible as we were now completely out of the city driving along the coastline.  The beach was off to our right about 1/2 mile the whole way and the sand was completely black.  The half mile to the beach from the road and all along the left side of the road for as far as you could see were lava fields with some of the most spectacular natural formations jutting upwards from the earth  I have ever seen.  No vegetation anywhere but in many large areas the hardened lava was covered in a very pale lime green moss that just added to the natural beauty.

 This went on for miles and miles with no connecting road or buildings of any kind. Off in the distance at many intervals we could see hot steam rising from the hundreds of geo thermal pools.  There are over 130 known volcanoes here which  are responsible for the landscape which was very barren.  It kind of felt like we were in a post apocalyptic movie scene or on another planet.  Ivar quickly pointed out that there have been many major movies shot here to provide that exact scene.  Game  of Thrones currently films here all the time and the latest movie was the Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

We had lunch at a local soup restaurant on the shore where we had a delicious lobster bisque.  Lobsters here are much smaller and seemed more sweet to me than east coast ones but there aren't a lot so they all stay domestic.  The guys all had dessert afterwards, a huge slice of Pudursy Kursmarengs med Snicers Kremi (caramel meringue cake).  both of which were a mouthful.

On the way back to Reykjavik, we stopped off at one of the most populart tourist attractions in all of Iceland, the Blue Lagoon (named way before the Brooke Shield's movie and way more impressive).
The Blue Lagoon is a geo thermal pool about the size of a football field.   It is surrounded by lava and the minerals that run off into the water makes the water appear to be turquoise blue.  There are three different sources from over 3000 feet underground that fill the pool and essentially replenishing the water completely every 40 minutes.
We stopped here about 4:00 pm to find over 100 people enjoying the therapeutic attributes of this natural spa.  And so did we.
The Icelanders kept this true to it's natural form by keeping the pool in its natural state and shape.

     The only thing they added that is man made was a walk up/swim up bar at the edge of the spring. (which we also participated in).  The spring was very hot and soothing with a feint smell of sulfur that surprisingly wasn't unpleasant.   The water level was only chest high except along the shore lines.  The bottom was all lava which was very smooth so it felt like you were walking on glass.  In some areas the bottom was a thick gray mud which was also along the shoreline where the dry lava rock started to submerge in the blue water and had started to dissolve.  This mud is very sought after for it's therapeutic properties and is sold world wide exclusively in spas.   Of course we had to rub some on our face and have the penultimate  juvenile mud fight with $100 an ounce mud right from the bottom.

BEING ADVENTUROUS IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY HAS CONSEQUENCES
On the way back to Reykjavik we found some horses on the side of the road we stopped to photograph.  On the opposite side of the road were more of the volcanic mountains of which a particularly tall one we could see and here many geo thermal springs percolating steam into the air.  Steve and I decided to climb it and get to the one on the summit around 900 feet up.
The mountain was pretty much barren of foliage and very steep at some points., The rocks and dirt were a beautiful dark orange and  brown color that was was tampered down smooth in some of the steepest points making it very slick and difficult to ascend.   The smell of sulfur was very pronounced here, and there were many small holes along the way up where we could see and hear steam escaping upward.   The closer we came to  the top, there were larger thermal pools to navigate around and the sizzling sound of escaping steam was much  louder.  The temperature grew warmer, and the whole area was shrouded in hot steam.
The largest pool at the very top, and was almost like a small lake with lots of little islands of rocks and dirt rising up throughout. I was hoping to jump across to some of these to get a photo from the center of the pool but just as I planted my foot to leap, the ground underneath I thought was solid was actually  a soft clay mud.  It looked exactly like the hard ground I had been stepping on but the heat from the thermal pool made it so soft that my leg was sucked in almost to my knee.
This was  a disaster.  The clay was very hot and completely engulfed my leg like a tight pair of leggings.  I felt the heat through my jeans and as I pulled my leg out with some effort, my sneaker remained stuck behind about 2 feet down.  Immediately the cavity my leg created started closing over my sneaker and I plunged my hand down to retrieve it.
My leg had the benefit of having blue jeans as insulation.  My arm did not, and the clay wasn't just very hot.  It was absolutely scalding.  Now with more effort, I struggled in a tug of wary with the clay trying to recapture my sneaker.  The clay had already covered it completely.   Through shear adrenalin of not wanting to walk down the mountain with just one, I worked through the hot clay pulling my sneaker out.  My sneaker was steaming, completely caked in hot muddy clay, but even worse, so was my hand which was instantly in pain.
Right at that point, Steve arrived at the top to witness me jumping around frantically, trying to wipe the clay off my hand on the bare dirt floor of the mountain as there was nothing else available.  Steve didn't realize what had happened so didn't offer any assistance.  He did however notice my saved sneaker laying on the ground caked in 2 inches of smoldering clay and immediately started  photographing it.   When it was all over, I had 3 burn blisters on the palm of my hand, the tips of 2 fingers were numb and tingling (for 3 more days actually) and the mud on my  sneaker and leg of my jeans dried so thick it was like plaster.
All in all it could have been much worse.  If I did jump across the water to the ground in the middle (which obviously would've been just as soft and probably hotter than where I sank) I would have sank farther in with both legs and no way to get out without plunging  my bare hands into the burning mud to try and pull myself out and then try to get back across the boiling spring.

Back in Reykjavik we had just enough time to get to our room to change for dinner (I had to hose the mud off my sneakers and blue jeans in my shower).
Since we stayed in the center of downtown, it was only a short walk to the restaurant, called simply, - The Fish Market.  On the way there we passed a small almost shack type of building, no larger than a small van with about 30 people in line.  Ivar commented that they sold the best hot dogs in all of Iceland there and that was the line for them.
Dinner was spectacular!  There were 9 of us and I convinced the table to go for the tasting menu which was 6 courses, and of course I chose the wines.   We started out with a seafood broth and a 2011 Burgundy Chablis.   Then we moved into pan seared salmon and minske whale, followed by Icelandic lamb served with a 2006 and 2005 Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile.  Everything was fantastic, and John and Steve got to try whale for the first time.