Made in London: Secret Smokehouse

Its founder Max Bergius tells Victoria Stewart why it's emotional smoking fish at all hours of the day and night
(Ronan Gallagher)
Ronan Gallagher
By Victoria Stewart15 February 2017

Based under an arch in London Fields with a sign outside it saying ‘The Secret Smokehouse,’ it would be easy to write this off as just another food business. But to do that would mean missing out on sampling what is some of London’s finest produce.

Inside, where there is the distinct and delicious peaty whiff of smoked fish, I meet its founder Max Bergius who is dressed in a white lab coat and under that a huge army camouflage puffa jacket designed presumably to keep him warm during the long production days. He does looks cold, but he offsets this by talking 10 to the dozen about how, in August 2016, almost by accident, he ended up smoking fish for the double Michelin-starred chef Claude Bosi.

As he begins the long story of how his little business came about he shows me around. Occasionally as Bergius opens the door of the smoker to show me rows of gleaming orange salmon and trout, a deep whooshing, whirring sound erupts into the small space. Poking the fish to show me they still have a few more hours to go, he then he sets about dampening a pile of sawdust in a bucket. “If you’ve got really dry sawdust it burns really quickly - but with water it burns slower and produces smoke,” he explains. Here he tells me why it's emotional smoking fish at all hours of the day and night

How many products do you now make?

I make four - oak smoked salmon, oak smoked kippers, oak smoked trout and oak smoked haddock. My smoker can hold small batches and I do that about three times a week.

Ronan Gallagher

How do you smoke your fish?

They are filleted up, then put onto dry salt in trays in a fridge to cure, then put into the smoker. I use oak sawdust - I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel or start infusing anything. I think that when the base product - the salmon - is this good, I don’t see the point. So then it smoulders away gently, and I leave it to get on with it - but it’s a secret how long it’s in there for! You can’t rush the process but you have to be flexible at this artisan level as you are constantly monitoring it, checking it, and tweaking it, whereas the more commercial makers just flick a button and leave it for a few hours. After that it comes out and goes immediately into a fridge in order to bring the core temperature down. After that, I split it into my wholesale and direct customer orders, pack them and send them. It’s very simple, but very labour intensive. And it’s just me. It’s quite emotional, which sounds really weird - but so much effort goes into it.

Where does the fish come from?

I buy from small, independent, family-run fish farms up in Scotland. I went on this magical mystery tour, ordering lots of fish from lots of different producers, and it was very obvious that the fish from the small independents is 10 times better quality because they’re not producing as much, they care about it and they’re a lot more conscious about their environment, too. You can also smell the sweetness from the boxes - it’s amazing. Whereas [in my experience] the fish from the other huge producers are really slimy, dirty with really pale flesh, and the bones don’t really form.

So when did you first smoke fish?

When I was growing up on the West coast of Scotland. [But I got back into it] three years ago as it was part of the cathartic process of decompressing from a business I’d set up. I came to a junction in my career three years ago where I had started an e-commerce platform, and the venture capital seed money I was chasing went out the window. I was used to working for myself, and I’d had loads of offers coming in, and we’d also just bought a little house in Stepney, but after 15 years in London I went back up to Scotland to hang out with dad and go over it all. Up there, I picked up a book on smoking to remind myself how to do it. And everyone started saying to me “this is phenomenal,” and I was really getting into it.

Ronan Gallagher

So how did The Secret Smokehouse come about? Did it feel important to produce something in London?

By accident! I came back to London and started doing all this consultancy work, and at the same time discovered that there was this huge infrastruture for getting people into the fishmongering industry. I got onto this wonderful course at Billingsgate Seafood School and off the back of that got a Saturday job in a fishmonger, and I’d never been happier than lugging boxes of ice with fish around. That went up to two days a week, and I began pushing away the consultancy work. I then looked into starting up a fishmonger in Clapton, but the set-up costs were so huge, so instead I built a little cold smoker and started smoking fish regularly. Through that research I found that Stepney had this insane history of smoking and was the home of London cure. I found two other [small smokehouses] but I wondered why there wasn’t a no-frills one. I just wanted to produce a really fab product - if you close your eyes and think of smoked salmon or kippers, that was what I wanted to produce. I started smoking inside a shed, and called it The Secret Smokeshed, and then in Stepney all the cockneys who love their seafood caught wind of it. They are such amazing people - and every single one of them who heard about it snapped my arm off.

What has the reaction been like - who do you now sell to?

So far people seem to really love it. [It started with] my local pub The Peacock which allowed me to have a Friday night basket on the bar, then that started selling out, then my milkman was taking orders on his rounds, then restaurants and hotels and friends of friends got in touch, and I had to go through the whole EHO (Environmental Health Organisation) process. I eventually gave a sample to Claude Bosi who has two Michelin stars - and he thought it was “phenomenal,” which was amazing. Now I sell to Wilton’s on Jermyn Street - to be accepted by them too is also pretty mental. I also sell to The Modern Pantry, Ellory, The Marksman restaurants, which is amazing, and I’m having conversations with lots of others. I am about to move my Saturday stall out the front to the SchoolYard area of Broadway Market.

Ronan Gallagher

What’s it like running a business in London?

Well, the support from the fish authority and the fish industry is absolutely amazing. I also just won a grant from Hackney for £2,000 to buy an electric van. Because my business is such a tiny little set-up I’m under huge scrutiny from the EHO so I’ve got to work in partnership with them, and I’ve got a food consultant too to check I’m doing everything right. What was [most] frustrating was the fact that there is all this chat about [there being support for] young start-ups when the reality is it’s just all chat. The paperwork [to apply] for a start-up loan is insane. It’s incredibly laborious. So that start-up loan structure was very offputting.

Do you still eat your products on a regular basis?

Yes, all the time. Usually when it comes out the next day and I’m slicing it up, I’ll taste it - although my intuition is now so good that I don’t always need to. For example the smoke is mostly done by sight - touching, feeling, smelling.

Do you still have time to eat and drink out for pleasure, or is it all work related now?

We try to, but my partner and I have a 19-month old daughter and my partner is also a makeup artist, and self employed so often on shoots. But I’ve made a pact with her to say that we’ll go and eat in the restaurants of everyone I supply to, and have a date night. We do love our food, seafood, and cooking at home.

Which other London producers do you admire?

I love other artisan producers - there are so many people doing great things. I admire and love E5 Bakehouse up the road - hats off to Ben Mackinnon for setting it up. I love that he only delivers within a 1-mile radius and he’s not going budge on that.

You can buy directly from The Secret Smokehouse at Arch 367 Mentmore Terrace, E8 3RR, or at secretsmokehouse.co.uk

Follow Victoria on Twitter @vicstewart

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