A (little) salt and batter-y

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/05/2011 (5534 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Behold the power of the pen.

A few years after Ducky’s English Style Fish & Chips opened in June 1993, Free Press restaurant critic Marion Warhaft paid the homey, 45-seat locale a visit. Days later, Warhaft wrote a glowing review of Ducky’s, located at 884 Notre Dame Ave., praising its “beautifully battered” cod and haddock, and its homemade tartar sauce.

Ducky’s owner Carol Finley wasn’t prepared for what came next. “That night, people were lined up outside the door, waiting for a table,” she says. “It got to the point where we couldn’t keep up with the demand, and were starting to run out of food.”

A customer who was seated near the restaurant’s open-style kitchen noticed the commotion, and approached Finley and her husband/business partner, Roy. He told them that when he was a teenager growing up in England, he worked at a fish and chips spot. And even though he hadn’t done this sort of thing in years, he volunteered to roll up his sleeves and don an apron. “He and his wife ended up cutting potatoes for three hours straight,” Finley says. (Let me guess: their dinner was on the house?)

Talk about an inauspicious start: one week after Finley took over the lease of a failed Chinese takeout joint, she was visited by a city health inspector. Although the divorced mother of two (she met Roy after she moved to Winnipeg, from Toronto, in January 1993) was aware that her new “home” could do with a modern furnace and a fresh coat of paint, she didn’t know it needed an exterminator, too.

“Basically, the guy from the city told me the place was full of mice, and that it was about to be condemned,” Finley says. “I already had a long to-do list, but he gave me an even longer list, and told me that if I did everything on it, he’d allow me to open. Which he did.”

So all’s well that ends well, right? Wrong.

Early on, Ducky’s wasn’t exactly packed to the gills. “In the first couple of years, there were lots of days when I didn’t even have $100 in sales,” Finley says. “Fish ‘n’ chips is a hard go, a) because fish is very expensive, and b) because you can’t let it get old. In this business, if you’re not fresh, you’re finished.”

All that changed after the Free Press review, and the following word-of-mouth. Soon, Finley was netting customers from as far away as Gimli, Stonewall and Hollywood.

“We didn’t have a clue who he was, until somebody told us,” Finley says, referring to the night Sir Ben Kingsley stopped by for dinner while he was in town shooting You Kill Me. “To me, he was just a little guy who wandered in, sat in the corner by himself, and ordered the halibut.”

Rob Lowe was less modest. “His handlers told us that he would have stepped in, but he didn’t want to create a big spectacle,” Finley says, rolling her eyes. “So they ordered takeout for him, and took it across the street.” (The former Brat Packer was in Winnipeg in 2001, filming the police drama Framed.)

The decor at Ducky’s is one part Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, and two parts North American Fisherman. One wall has been converted into a veritable sports hall of fame, plastered with pennants and photographs of the Finleys’ favourite teams. Directly opposite that is a school of mounted trophy fish.

“This fish was caught by one of our friends, John,” Finley says, touring a visitor around. “The one above it was caught in P.E.I., by a fellow named Dave.”

So let me get this straight: people show up for dinner with a reservation and a trout under their arm?

“The majority are gifts, yes,” Finley says. “But this one here (Finley points out a metre-long Northern pike) I had to barter for. A customer told me he was moving into an apartment, and didn’t have room for it anymore.

“He asked if I would I give him two orders of fish and chips for it and I told him, ‘I’ll give you four!'”

Newspaper reviews aside, Finley says the best comments she receives are from customers from across the pond, looking for a taste of home.

“We get a lot of Brits in here,” says Finley, whose own grandfather was born in England. “People who’ve been told by their friends, ‘If you want fish ‘n chips that are done properly, you have to go to Winnipeg, Canada.'”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

WISE QUACKS

 

Carol Finley lived in Toronto before moving to Winnipeg to be near her sister. She spent 10 years there working at Len Duckworth’s Fish & Chips, a Toronto institution since 1930.

The name Ducky’s has nothing to do with former Winnipeg Jets captain Dale “Ducky” Hawerchuk. “When we first opened, people figured he must be one of the owners,” Finley says. “But no. Ducky is an English term of affection, as in, ‘How you doing there, ducky?'”

Saturday used to be Finley’s second busiest day of the week, after Friday. Not any more: Ducky’s is open Monday to Friday only. “Last May I finally stopped working seven days a week,” Finley says. “Some of the regulars gave it to me, but most people said, ‘Good for you, Carol, you need a life, too.'”