" At the market, the only commercial smokehouse on the upper North Shore, I bought two herrings and walked toward the dock, stopping on the way to look into a fish shed where Harley Toftey, bright in orange waders, was cutting his morning catch, 80 pounds of herring, each about 12 inches long and weighing about a pound. He deftly and nearly bloodlessly opened the bellies of the sleek and fulgent fish, removed the innards while leaving head and tail, and tossed each into a bin ready for 12 hours in his small smokehouse, the next-to-last stop on a voyage fro 150 feet down in frigid Superior to a warm dinner plate."
-William Least Heat-moon
"...smoked fare can be had at the Dockside Fish Market..."
"You can't go wrong with any of the smoked items."
"One of the few remaining North Shore commerical fisheries, the Dockside takes its catch--bluefin herring, lake trout, whitefish, and Canadian walleye--soaks it in a brown-sugar brine, and smokes it till you can hardly resist flaking it onto a cracker. It also sells Minnesota's only indigenous caviar, harvested each fall from Lake Superior herring."
What would it take to bring Minnesota fish back to our kitchens and restaurants?
"According to Shele Toftey, co-owner of Dockside Fish Market in Grand Marais, the main reason you don't see more local fish such as walleye on menus and in markets is because they can't be commercially fished in Minnesota."
"Toftey and her husband sell more and more herring each year and are even seeing their herring caviar served stateside these days."
--Andrew Zimmern
Quintessential Minnesota food experiences not to be missed when you're visiting the state.
...Maple-smoked whitefish from Dockside Fish Market, in Grand Marais.
Reputation and mystique helped the Russians make their name in caviar. But Minnesota's increasingly popular Lake Superior herring may be poised for a 1980 Olympic hockey-style upset. Dockside Fish Market in Grand Marais began processing lake herring caviar in 2003, selling some of it locally but freezing and shipping most of the tiny, bright orange eggs to Scandinavia. While the roe looks a lot like the sushi topping tobiko, it has a creamy texture instead of a crunchy bite. With the roe priced at about $3 an ounce, one employee of Coastal Seafoods in Minneapolis calls it his "favorite caviar that costs less than $200."
...Caviar enthusiasts looked to the American market for their fishy fix; the Dockside Fish Market in Grand Marais experimented with processing caviar from Lake Superior herring, and the overwhelming flood of orders quickly necessitates the building of a new processing plant....