2008 Hols: Essex 3: The Company Shed

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I went to Wivenhoe with my Aunts to go to The Company Shed. It is a post world war two leftover pocket of seafood eating and celebratory culture, as far as I can tell. Wivenhoe is across a tidal river from Rowhedge. The tidal river implies that you are close to the sea, and therefore good seafood. We came to The Company shed to eat some.




You sit at shared tables, with random strangers. On the left is my aunt by relationship, on the right is my aunt biologically on mother side, but then next to her is some random English dude I'd never seen before or since.



The Company supplies glasses, in assortment. You bring your own bread, butter and wine. We were given tumblers of odd sizes with which to drink our sparkling wine.

You got given a knife, fork and a little scratchy poky instrument to yank things out of shells.



We got random plates of stuff. Some of it I could identify. We got crabs, salmon, smoked fish of a couple of kinds. Then there were these weird gray and yellow gritty things, some kind of mollusk, I think. The gray and yellow gritty things went well with Tabasco sauce, oddly.



As at any occasion involving any of my extended family, we ate a lot, in this case everything.



On the whole the thing had a kind of Pacific Island feel to it. The all seafood meal, and fingers and poky thing technique and the celebration atmosphere of the thing all felt Rarotongan. I can feel my land lovers grasping at something about the bounty of the sea and fisher cultures at play.