The walls around me are charred black, and dozens of headless silver haddocks hang by their tails from wooden sticks. A man in blue overalls and orange wellies lowers the fish into a wood-fired pit made of bricks. Outside, grey waves crash over the harbour walls, and the wind — expected to reach 50 miles per hour by sunset — howls through the smokehouse chimney.
I’d been told Arbroath, a 12th-century fishing town 16 miles north east of Dundee, was the sunniest place in Scotland. On the train from Edinburgh, passengers spoke of the Scottish port town like it was on the Mediterranean: fresh fish lunches by the marina; Italian ice cream on the beach; smoked haddock pies and quiches on sandstone cliffs, where quiet coves and natural swimming pools turn Caribbean blue in the summer. But when I arrive, the November wind is strong enough to knock me over and break my umbrella in half. Ice cream and sea swims seem unlikely.
Instead, I follow the smell of smoked fish to the Fit o’ the Toon, the part of Arbroath where the Brothock Burn river meets the sea. Meaning ‘lower end of town’ in Scots, this is where the famed Arbroath smokie — split and salted haddock hot-smoked over a hardwood fire — is made. Yet, despite the name, this speciality was actually born three miles north of Arbroath, in the town of Auchmithie. The switch to Arbroath came in 1705, when villagers first began moving to the Fit o’ the Toon for the promise of
