You Can Keep Your Wagyu, I’m Going Back to Firepop for the “Pest Fish” Dish

Firepop is on The Hot List, the definitive guide to Sydney’s most essential food and drink experiences.

The lamb “pop” at Firepop, which radiates cumin and glistens with a varnish of rendered fat, was every bit as good as expected. And the gleaming Wagyu cube – full-blooded, with a 9+ marble scoring – more than lived up to its buttery, beefy promise.

But you expect a restaurant’s signature dishes to be great, particularly when they’re made with prestigious meat from Australia’s most revered producers. Of course the pops at Firepop are good.

What really took me by surprise was the charcoal-grilled carp. This fish, which I only ever think of when I’m beside a pond, has been on the menu for a little over a month, and it’s already winning patrons over in a big way.

“Every single person that has it absolutely loves it,” says Firepop’s co-owner Alina Van. “A 100 per cent hit rate.”

It’s only just joined the menu but, for Van’s husband and co-owner Raymond Hou, its addition has been a long time coming.

“I was born in northern China so I grew up eating carp, it’s a main part of our diet,” he says. “It’s a beautiful fish, but over here it’s a pest that that causes so many problems.”

Carp are a bottom-feeding freshwater fish, so their flavour is heavily influenced by the quality of the water they inhabit. That’s part of the reason they’ve got such a bad reputation. But when Hou and Van tried carp from Coorong Wild Seafood in South Australia, they knew they’d finally found a producer that could demonstrate the fish’s true potential.

“It was so sweet and had no muddy flavour,” says Hou. “It was unreal and tasted better than I could have possibly imagined.”

“Every time I serve it to someone, they get blown away and can’t believe what they’re eating,” says Tracy Hill, who co-owns Coorong Wild Seafood with her husband Glen “The Carp Tickler” Hill. “It’s a so-called ‘pest fish’, but it’s one of the most eaten fish in the world.”

The Hills have been fishing in the Coorong lagoon, about two hours’ south of Adelaide, since 1992. It’s the last estuarine gasp of the Murray River before it hits the Southern Ocean, and it’s part of a broader wetland that includes two coastal freshwater lakes: Albert (Yarli) and Alexandrina.

Originally, the Hills derived most of their income from fishing yellow-eye mullet in the Coorong but, during the Millennium Drought on the Murray, the government contracted them to “get a heap of carp out of Lake Albert, because they were all going to die and create a big toxic soup,” Tracy says. “So we had a contract to harvest 300 tonnes out of the lake.”

So although Coorong mullet is still the Hills’ flagship fish (Josh Niland has it on offer at Fish Butchery), Lake Albert carp has gradually become a more meaningful part of the business.

Since its introduction to the Murray-Darling basin, European carp has overrun it and wrought ecological havoc. And it’s too late to get rid of them.

“The government looked at introducing a virus that would knock them out, but if you did that, because there’s so much carp in the system, it would be an ecological disaster,” Tracy says. “It would de-oxygenate the water and kill everything in it. The best thing to do is to harvest it and eat it.”

According to Tracy, the secret to their carp’s clean flavour all comes down to Glen’s handling of them when he pulls them from the nets, hence the carp-tickling nickname.

“He basically tries to de-stress them when he pulls them from the nets, so that they don’t develop that gamey flavour from stress hormone tainting the flesh,” she says. “If you don’t treat the fish with respect, you’re going to get that strong flavour.”

Then they go straight into an ice slurry before they’re sent off. The Hills have supplied their carp to some of South Australia’s best restaurants – including The Salopian Inn and Africola – but, so far, Firepop is the only Sydney restaurant using it.

And boy, do they use it. Hou and Van order just 20 kilos of carp each week, which means they get around 10 fish to work with. Hou guts and scales each fish before giving it a salt rub and dry aging it. Then each carp is filleted on the same night that it’s served. Carp are notoriously bony – another reason for their bad eating reputation. Hou and the rest of his team meticulously debone each fillet before it’s ready to hit the charcoal grill.

Once it does, it’s served in a puddle of herb and chilli salsa, topped with a sheen of turmeric oil. It’s one of the best pieces of fish I’ve ever had. It’s like the texture of cod met the cleanness of chicken, with a heavy umami smack that tastes like a deeply savoury salted caramel.

“A lot of people have the wrong idea about what carp tastes like,” Hou says. “But after trying it they say, ‘Why aren’t we eating this more?’ So I would definitely say to come and try it before you make your mind up.”

Everyone says to go to Firepop for the meat. And you definitely should. But if you see that carp – especially because it’s only guaranteed to be around till the end of winter – it’s a must-order. If eating the problem always tasted this good, I’d have cane toad for dinner every week – especially if the Hills caught it and Ray Hou cooked it for me.

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