Caravan’s Miles Kirby Recalls the Taste of Childhood Flounder

Chef and co-founder of London’s Caravan restaurant Miles Kirby grew up in New Zealand, where he loved to catch fish from the beach. Kirby tells the Telegraph about his “soul food”.

“In New Zealand the long summer holiday runs from mid December to the end of January,” Kirby begins. “We used to pack up and head for our beach house at Te Horo.

“It was a real shack – two rooms and an outside toilet close to the rocky, windswept beach – but to me it was a sort of paradise. I spent all day on the beach, looking for crabs in the pools, and helping my dad make fishing nets … usually we caught flounder.

“My mother would just flour and fry the flounder whole in the pan, and put it on the table, all buttery and served with wedges of lemon picked from the tree outside. We’d eat it for a late breakfast or early lunch, depending on the tides. We had no sense of time there – we got up and went to bed with the sun.

“Today, when I taste the sticky chewiness of a flat fish, I’m taken straight back to that beach and the fresh flounder in the pan.”

Caravan is a restaurant, bar and coffee roastery located in Farringdon’s Exmouth Market. It opened in 2010.

Original article by Mile Kirby, The Telegraph, January 10, 2014.