An ode to the omnipresent glass fish plate
On the Arcoroc fish platters floating around local restaurants, an Air New Zealand cup controversy and a buttery snack.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter produced in partnership with Boring Oat Milk. Written by me, Charlotte Muru-Lanning. It’s lovely to have you here!
Not always, but often, when I sit down to write these newsletters, inspiration is a relatively easy thing to reach for. Even when I don’t have an opinion that’s been creeping around my thoughts for a few days, desperately waiting to be put into writing, I’ve usually eaten something that sparks some kind of aha moment, or that’s so delicious I just need to tell you about it. But it’s been a short, busy week for me and I seem to have picked up a cold somewhere along the way too.
Reflecting on what I’ve eaten this week – leftover mapo tofu, instant noodles with an egg, an 8pm tinned baked beans dinner, chips and gherkin dip – it’s safe to say I’m running as low on necessary vitamins and minerals as I am on exciting culinary inspiration. Sometimes the metaphorical plate is completely empty, and that’s OK.
But on the topic of plates, I did want to briefly share my appreciation for the Arcoroc fish or “poisson” plate. You’ll know them when you see them; transparent glass platters in the shape of whole fish – scales, tails and all. A creature of the sea crystallised. If you were married in the 1980s there’s a good chance you acquired a set of them as a wedding gift and then, as far as I can tell by the sheer number of these plates at op shops, eventually ditched them. And if you’ve found yourself in one or two distinctly “cool” establishments over the past five years, you’ve probably come across a dish served upon one.
They’re noticeably common in casual eateries that offer small plates, good olives and natural wines on the menu. In all their variety of sizes, these eccentric retro plates will often be streaked with strips of raw fish, fresh herbs and pickled radish or smothered by a bed of crushed ice and shucked oysters or overlaid with a kaleidoscope of crudités. Kai that is light, zingy, colourful and much of the time sourced from the sea is where these fish platters really shine.
The French roots of the Arcoroc brand that produced the fish plate, along with the utilitarian brown glass mugs we all know from the marae and staffroom, could perhaps help to explain their renaissance in Aotearoa, which seems to accompany the rise of French-influenced neo bistros locally over the last five or so years. Established in 1958, Arcoroc makes hard-wearing glassware designed to be used intensively in industrial settings like bars, hotels and restaurants, and these fish plates went into production in the 1970s. But Arcoroc weren’t the first to do it – fish plates have appeared throughout history, with Hellenistic Greeks during the fourth century BC creating footed plates painted with fish to serve succulent morsels of marine animals, and there are painted fish plates dotted throughout Chinese pottery history too. American company Atterbury Glass Co. produced milky glass plates in the 1870s, and German brand Waechtersbach made fish-shaped serveware out of porcelain in the early 1900s. It turns out people have been into fish-shaped plates for ages.
But through no fault of their own, it’s at the point now where these Arcoroc plates are so ubiquitous they could easily be added to the heap of tired restaurant trends, overworked till they become a culinary cliché and then cast aside. Perhaps to some they’re already in this category, but to me they’ll forever be charming. I love how deceivingly delicate they look, I love the sound of clinking knives and forks against them and I love how composed the fish, the species of which I’m unsure, looks.
With their ethereal zoomorphic quality, they offer a type of whimsy that feels hard to come by these days. This isn’t intended as a dramatic tribute to these glassware fish, rather a small, quiet nod of appreciation to a plate that makes everything placed upon it a little more special.
The Boil Up is brought to you in partnership with Boring Oat Milk.
No wild oats here. Just very tame, well-behaved ones. As the best supporting actor in cereal, hot drinks and smoothies; milk is essential but who gets excited about milk? This oat milk isn’t particularly riveting either. It doesn’t have exciting artificial flavours, stabilisers or nasty surprises. Fortified with calcium and vitamins; it’s boringly similar to regular milk but without the actual milking bit. Head to boringmilk.com for an untapped supply of New Zealand made oat milk straight from the source. Check the box that says ‘Subscription’ and save 10%.
Weekly bites
Consumer NZ has accused Air New Zealand of greenwashing and misleading passengers by way of a statement on its compostable cups. In-flight cups boast printed messages saying “made from plants, not plastic”. And while it’s true that the cups are made of plants and are technically compostable, Consumer NZ says the message creates an impression that the cup has less impact on the environment than regular cups, which isn’t necessarily true because many of the cups aren’t composted anyway and simply end up in landfill. “Air New Zealand told us that only cups from incoming Auckland domestic flights are composted,” Consumer NZ wrote in a press release. The airline has called the allegations “unfair”, but hasn’t shared how many of the cups end up being composted.
Arnotts, the producer of afternoon tea classics like Tim Tams, Farmbake cookies and Shapes, has opened up shop again in New Zealand, after its manufacturing shifted offshore 25 years ago. Until 1997, when they closed their factory doors, the producer had been operating out of Ōtāhuhu, in South Auckland. They’ve now begun operating from a brand new facility in West Auckland where they’ll be producing up to 13,000 packets of gourmet crackers, and the brand has hinted that there’s potential for new biscuit creations. This all reminds me of this fascinating essay on the important cultural context behind the world of biscuit manufacturing and eating in India.
In an essay on Bon Appetit, Carmen Maria Machado examines what it means that audiences right now can’t get enough of cannibalism stories, such as those on television series like The Last of Us and Yellowjackets.
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The weekly snack
Iwatsuka Seika butter mochi senbei, $3.90 from Japan Mart: For those (myself included) unschooled in cracker variations, senbei are a style of rice crackers from Japan. You’ll find them in a thrilling variety of different shapes, sizes, thickness and flavours. They tend to be savoury – speckled with sesame seeds or nori or red pepper, but on occasion, such as today, you’ll find sweet versions. Within this pack were 18 individually wrapped crackers (which seems overly zealous but there’s good reason for the exorbitant packaging – they’re ridiculously flimsy). These elongated crackers have less of that hardcore crunch than you might be used to in your senbei, with a wonderfully crisp dissolving quality instead. You could almost drift off and forget you’re eating them – dangerous! They’re lightly sweetened, milky and dusted in a buttery melt-in-the-mouth kinako flour – a type of flour most often used to coat Japanese sweets – which coats your tongue and simply melts away. Despite verging on having a kind of artificial butterine quality, the butter element is mellow enough to feel somewhat elegant. Good luck resisting a second. 8/10
Talk next week!
Hei kōnā mai, Charlotte
