Chicago is a big city with lots of fish places. However, there are only TWO that smoke their own fish on premises using wood and nothing else. This is a story about one of those places, Calumet Fisheries. It opened in 1928 and in 1948 it was purchased by a family where it has remained ever since. In 2009 it was featured in an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”. In 2010, they won a James Beard America’s Classics Award. Check out some of the names on that list. In 2023, there was a fire that forced it to close for over six months while it was being renovated. It finally reopened a couple months ago, and since then they’re selling out of their smoked fish daily. I finally went for the first time at the beginning of June, and now I’m hooked.
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I have been gradually eating my way through their menu, so here are my reviews.
Fried menu
So first my fried seafood recommendations: Everything. My top three so far are the fried scallops (so big, so juicy, so sweet), the fried frog legs (tastes like peppery chicken), and the fried oysters (so good by themselves or make a po’boy). The only fried seafood left to try are the shrimp, stuffed shrimp, and the crab cakes. Oh, they bread their own stuff every day. They also make their own hot, mild, and tartar sauces.
Smoked and sides menu
But I’m here to talk about the smoked fish. As I’ve mentioned, they smoke in house. They brine overnight, then string it up and hang it on racks to smoke. For the garlic pepper, the brine is garlicked, of course, and before smoking, they roll the fish in black peppercorns. I’ve tried five kinds, all wonderful. I’ve tried shrimp, trout, salmon, sable, and sturgeon. I have some whitefish I’m going to try next week. Hopefully they will have some eel for the Holidays. The one fish they don’t have anymore are smoked chubs, the reason being heavy overfishing. You can’t really get them anywhere anymore. My favorites are the trout and sturgeon. So fatty. So buttery. And the salmon is just as good. As are the smoked shrimp. You need to peel them yourself, and devein them if you’re inclined. Here’s some ways I’ve used this lovely smoked fish. Here’s a hunk of salmon and a hunk of sturgeon. I added them to some golden buttered rice (I love that stuff) with some green onion whites.
Salmon on the bottom, sturgeon on top. The strings are how they hang the fish for smoking.
Smoked sturgeon and salmon. Flaked and ready to mix into the rice. Such yum.
I also decided to make a smoked fish dip/spread for a picnic with friends. Pretty standard stuff. I used smoked trout and salmon. I flaked it (a greasy, messy job, and I missed quite a few bones), then added whipped cream cheese, sour cream, green onion tops, Worcestershire, Old Bay, pepper, nori furikake, and lemon zest and juice. It was well received, but a bit lemon forward. I had quite a bit left over, because I made a LOT.
So then I had to decide what to do with that leftover dip.
Remember the fake crab Chinese buffet thing I did? I decided to go that way and add the mix to some buttered furikake rice. So to the leftover dip I added more cream cheese and more fish—another big hunk of salmon (a pound’s worth) and a hunk of sable (seen below)
This piece of sable was a little over a half pound.
I also added shredded cheese, more spices, and some garlic butter spread.
The rice was simple. My preferred cooking rice is either basmati or jasmine, depending on what’s available or on sale. Melt a ton of butter, add rice and coat and toast, then add water. Bring to a boil, cover, lower the heat for 15 minutes. Then turn off the heat and wait another 15 minutes, then fluff. When the rice was done, I added some sushi vinegar, katsuo furikake, and a touch of sesame oil. Nicely balanced in flavors.
Before I made the rice, I made some “Dad corn”. I call it that because that’s the way my Dad made it. Melt butter, add some frozen corn, turn it up to evaporate the water, then reduce and slowly let that butter absorb into the corn as it begins to caramelize. The only seasoning besides salted butter? A F**K ton of black pepper.
When the rice was done, I mixed everything together and added it to a casserole with a lot more spreadable butter in the pan.
One thing that happened was that I mixed in the new cream cheese while it was still pretty hard. So I wound up with chunks of cream cheese. The best I could do was to make the chunks as small as I could. And those chunks stayed coherent during the bake. They added a nice creaminess whenever I got one.
I covered it in foil and let it bake for a while. Then I removed the foil and added more shredded cheese on top and let it broil. I let it broil a bit too long. What you see may look burnt, but it didn’t taste that way. You know that caramelized cheese that cooks in the pan when making a grilled cheese or a burger? Yup, crispy and yummy.
That white spot is after I sampled some of the dark cheese. Yum.
You get sweetness from the corn, the brightness from the lemon and vinegar, the smoke from the fish, the richness of butter and cheese, a bit of tang from the cream cheese, and grounding it all and tying it together was that little bit of sesame oil. It all balanced in an umami bomb of a dish.
But what about the skin? You put a little oil in a pan and fry it like bacon. Trout, salmon, and sable skin fried up crisp and fatty. What you see is salmon, trout, and sable skin. The sturgeon skin was too tough and leathery, and all sources say it’s not good eats.
Crispy, fatty fish skin. Such yum.
What else have I done with their smoked fish? I did a paella with shrimp. I had about a half pound of their smoked shrimp, and I also used some EZ peel shrimp. I used the shrimp shells from the EZ peel and the smoked shrimp to make the saffron stock for the rice. I used Mexican chorizo instead of a smoked version. Like with the scallop paella, I cooked the raw shrimp with the rice, and added the smoked shrimp at the end. I also added some fake krab at the end for more protein. Folks, if you’re ever in Chicago, go on a day when they have smoked shrimp. They’re so good.
Smoked shrimp. SO good.
I also did the rice casserole recipe highlighted above again with some variations. I used Boursin cheese instead of cream cheese, for example, and a LOT more fish than before. But mostly the same stuff. Check out THIS version!
This time I pulled it out before the cheese got too cooked.
As for WFD, tonight I’m doing lamb breast plate in the slow cooker and pairing it with an Israeli couscous and sautéed mushrooms all mixed together. There might be a future diary on this particular cut that’s much less expensive than other cuts of lamb. I’ll take you inside my head as I planned this particular recipe.
The table is set, What’s for Dinner at your place? The table conversation? What kinds of recipes do you like to do with smoked fish besides salads and sammiches?
NOTE: I will be a bit late for the comments as I’ll be finishing tonight’s WFD.
