The hunt for the Dredgerman’s Breakfast
‘I’m looking to try a Dredgerman’s breakfast?’ you say, anticipation and optimism turning you into a labrador at their bowl.
‘Nope never heard of it,’ comes the reply, you try again.
‘Sorry, not sure what that is.’
‘Nope.’
‘Try Wheeler's?’
‘No idea what that is, we have oysters though, and rolls.’
‘Not sure that’s a thing.’
‘Nope.’
You must persevere, much as you’re a hangdog now.
‘Nope, not here.’
You’ve tried every cafe, every restaurant, every butcher and fish shop and chippie and stall; you’ve walked the high street from where you parked the car, down to the harbour, and back again, both sides of the road. You’ve been told that what you’re looking for is not a thing, certainly is not a thing from this place, and even though you’re just sure it is a thing, you’re certain it would have been eaten here, in fact you know it was, you read it in a book, despite all of that you’re on the cusp of giving up.
You’ve spent the best part of a week around this part of Kent and there's a sense that it can be hard to leave a place like this if you grew up here, but that lots of people are desperate to be elsewhere. Or desperate for this to be somewhere else, is perhaps a better way to put it. On the road from Canterbury to Whistable, for that is where you’re headed, you notice a pub with a big banner sign that reads ‘Miami Pizza Co. available here now!’, there’s a garden nursery offering to sell you potted herbs from a company named ‘Malibu Herbs’ and many places you pass seem to be designed to place you elsewhere, convince you you’re not here, not still here.
The thing is, what you’re after is very much from here. The Whitstable Oyster Company can trace its origins back to the 1400s, but Whitstable oysters go even further back, almost two thousand years, more probably, but certainly, to the Roman discovery that these naturally occurring molluscs were really rather good, so good in fact that rumour has it they shipped them live to be enjoyed all the way over in Rome. By the company’s peak in the 1850s, it was sending as many as 80 million oysters a year to Billingsgate fish market, about half of what was consumed each year in the capital. By then the plentiful oyster had become the food of the beer-swilling poor.
The thing about Whitstable is that its position at the mouth of the Swale river, (which mixes fresh water and nutrients with the salt water of the Thames Estuary,) and the river’s typography determine that it has shallow waters that are quickly warmed by the sun, meaning perfect conditions for the oyster to breed and grow. It used to be that a large fleet of up to 80 smacks and yawls, or fishing boats to you and I, (although finessed for the specific task of dredging and harvesting oysters,) were moored off the beach to dredge the oyster beds. Sadly, according to The Whitstable Oyster Company, ‘two World Wars, the great flood of 1953 and the introduction of the prawn cocktail’ (LOL,) saw the popularity of the oyster dwindle.
You’re walking these streets with all this swilling about your head, and you’re getting blank looks and dismissive shrugs at every turn, anyone would think this place is trying to become more than what it was, more than a place that used to be the centre of British oyster production.
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