Old Habits fish sauce from Vancouver Island is true Canadian umami

From a facility on Vancouver Island's Port Alberni, a coastal town where fishing boats dot the inlet visible from his office window, Nathan Gawalko is practising something nearly lost to time: traditional fish sauce fermentation.

It's taken enough time as it is for Nathan to acclimate himself to a slower pace. Five years into running Old Habits—one of Canada's very few fish sauce manufacturers—he admits with a laugh that he still hasn't fully adapted to the waiting game that defines his craft.

"It was great for the first couple of years," he says about trading kitchen chaos for fermentation's languid rhythms. "Then I started to miss it. I don't know what to do with that excess energy."