Fish story

I am not exactly sure what’s going on in the world of little wriggling fish, but anchovies are disappearing from the supermarket shelves in Northern California.

Actually—make that they have already disappeared. Not one single Trader Joe’s in Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale or Los Altos has so much as a tin, and they’ve taken to spreading out the smoked trout and sardines to cover up the major gap.

And Whole Foods had only a few cans, when there was space for two suppliers. Great, gaping space.

The manager at the Mountain View TJ told me that it’s a system thing—no anchovies in the pipeline anywhere. Although he didn’t know what the problem is.

There was apparently a mass anchovy suicide last month in Marina del Rey—thousands of the little silver buggers washed up on the beaches there. But the supermarkets have been bereft of them for longer than that. And most of the suppliers for the canned variety are in Europe, apparently.

Whatever. What this means for me is that there’s no Salad Niçoise for the foreseeable future, because you can’t have that without anchovies, you just can’t.

Which means—a whole lot more pasta primavera salads. Dang.