... if the economy does not tank to the point that "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" is no longer a fanciful '80s cinematic misfire, but cold reality; also if I ever inherit a million billion dollars and can run my gastropub as a vanity project.
Deep-fried tiny fish spines
Last September Ceej and I ate dinner at Alinea, which I am still trying to find the words to adequately describe. After a long struggle, I realized that I can only do Alinea justice by using it as the setting for a longish piece of science fiction with dashes of romance, Vodoun, and politics; watch for it here, once I finish exorcising the demons.
ANYWAY, at one point during the four-hour BDSM routine that is dinner at Grant Achatz' crown jewel, we were served a thing like a napoleon, except instead of pastry it had watermelon -- immaculate organic watermelon that had been fed the blood of virgins, no doubt -- and instead of Bavarian cream it had a slice of nearly-raw fish that was totally unfamiliar to me. I couldn't even find the fucker on Wikipedia. I think Alinea may have a crack team of oceanographers on the payroll, who routinely explore the depths of Lake Michigan to discover new and exciting species of delicious, delicious fish and render them extinct before the French Laundry has a crack at them. I think there was some basil oil involved, and some obscure peppery microgreen.
So this thing was presented to us, and it was so awe-inspiringly brilliant that it almost made me cry -- the kind of thing Bach would have come up with if he were a chef. But the best thing was the garnish: a minute, deep-fried fish spine, aligned in such a way that it looked like it was diving headfirst into the watermelon part. I think this spine used to belong to an anchovy, or something similar that flits around in great silvery schools until the dolphins eat giant wads of them, and it's sad, on the nature special.
It was not sad when I polished off my napoleon and said (too loudly, fueled by a great deal of the finest Barolo known to humanity), "YUM. TIME FOR TINY FISH SPINE." I excavated my neglected fish spine from the microgreens and ate its wonderful, shattering, spiky, oceanic self, and experienced a major HOLY SHIT rush. It tasted like the very essence of ocean: the faint odor of rotting, and the strong odor of fresh bright ozone, and the possibility of being eaten by something, or eating something. Waving weeds, blowing froth, pointy things under your feet, coming to the surface with a ribbon of blood unspooling from your heel...
It also tasted like DELICIOUS FISHY FRITOS. And removed from their exalted homeland, fancy deep-fried fish spines would be so comforting piled in a basket to be crunched by the handful alongside a Stella Artois or three, with the game on TV and the faint memory of the last time you were on a boat... the spray and the creak of the ropes and leaning over the rail to watch the fish, the little silvery fish...
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