In our Food on Fridays post today we take a look at a local outdoor market tradition: Fish rolls.

At the Friday outdoor market here in Tübingen, the stand that sells fresh fish has signs up that advertise a variety of fish rolls. That is, they sell sandwiches that are bread rolls, Brötchen, that have cold, cooked fish on them as the filling. Usually, the two people in line ahead of me order the herring ones, and it takes about 4 minutes per sandwich to be made, since the sandwich is put together from scratch when ordered. Since there is usually just one guy working at the stall, I’ve watched him make these sandwiches time and time again.

Now, I’ve been intrigued by this idea, since even at 9:30am people are ordering these to munch on as they walk away from the stand. It’s interesting how different cultures have different traditions for what constitutes a reasonable mid-morning coffee break snack. Here in Tübingen, apparently, a morning fish sandwich is quite popular from this market stall; a bit different from the U.S. where people might go for a coffee and doughnut.

BTW, have I mentioned that doughnuts are not considered breakfast food here? I’ve been served Berliners (the jelly doughnuts) after lunch at events here in town. It’s interesting how odd that always strikes me, since I don’t think of a doughnut as a dessert food like cookies or cakes. But when people buy Berliners, they are eating them later in the day; in the morning, breakfast from a bakery here often is a pretzel with butter on it, or a ham and cheese sandwich.

Anyway, I’ve been eyeing these fish snack sandwiches as something that I should try someday. But since I don’t typically like herring, I haven’t been so excited about trying them, and certainly the idea of eating them just after breakfast wasn’t something I could picture myself doing at all.

Further, there are different kinds of herring on offer, the main types being something called Matjeshering, a young salted herring according to my dictionary, and just plain Hering. Since I don’t know what the differences are, in order to try one I’d just have to pick a name and hope for the best. The trays of them sitting in the case aren’t labelled, but everyone always seems to know which is which, since I never hear anyone asking “what’s that” and pointing to a tray.

Anyway, this morning I wound up at the market closer to lunchtime. So, I stood in the line, and had just resolved to order a Matjeshering Brötchen when the guy in line ahead of me ordered exactly that. But then a huge discussion ensued as the guy making the sandwich asked him all kinds of questions, and showed him various filet types — which the customer kept rejecting on some basis that I didn’t quite follow. Finally, the customer’s Matjeshering Brötchen was completed to his satisfaction.

Hmm, this was looking like a more complicated thing to order than I’d anticipated. I didn’t follow much of the conversation about the sandwich, and so it wasn’t clear what all the decision points were when evaluating the pieces of herring.  I suddenly was less certain that I could order one of these sandwiches without knowing more about herring, and I had certainly not studied any herring sandwich vocabulary before heading to the market.

So when it was my turn, I stepped right up to the counter and ordered something I’d never seen on the list before today: a trout Brötchen. Trout is fish that’s common in this area of Germany; I’d never had it served cold before, so this was something different. The man behind the counter took my order and proceeded to put the sandwich together without further discussion until it came time to put a spread on the bread. He then asked me if I wanted X or not. I had no idea what X was, as I couldn’t didn’t actually hear the word he’d used. But he seemed poised to put it on as a matter of course, only pausing to confirm rather than really question. So I gambled and said yes. X turned out to be something that looked rather like mayonnaise as he spread it on, but that wasn’t the word he’d used.

I’d asked for it to go so I could carry it home (less than a 5 minute walk) and eat it there. Once home, I carefully unwrapped my trout Brötchen and cautiously bit into it to see what the spread was. And what do you know – it was a mayonnaise-based horseradish style spread, with a lovely little kick to it to go with the fairly nondescript trout. Quite nice and tangy as a fish sandwich for lunch.

But for a coffee break?  I think I’d rather go back to my Berliner research for that meal. 😉