fruits de mer

I ate an oyster.
Here's how it happened...

It was in an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet; the kind of place where you wade into a wall of odor - onions, soy, hot fat, fish, sweet and sour sauce - and your skin is instantly saturated with peanut oil. The kind of place where you're so hungry that you don't notice the stained curtains and splattered sneezeguard until you've gobbled up two platefuls. The kind of place where a big sign in red letters posted above the sushi bar reminds you that consuming raw fish greatly increases your chance of foodborne illness. (translation: "don't eat the sushi!!")

It was in the midst of this cacophony of aromas, this steady rythmic murmur of various languages, this "I've-got-three-days-off-work-and-I'm-shopping-with-the-girls" giddiness that my friend and I spotted the oysters in black bean sauce. A tray heaping with gargantuan barnacled shells, the truth of the unappealing mollusc "bodies" concealed with glistening garnish. And my friend and I looked at each other. That knowing look that screams "Dare ya!" While we were at it, we figured we ought to give the cheese mussels a try. And the squid - absolutely.

Actually, I quite like squid. At the Greek restaraunt where I used to work we served baby ones, whole and battered with fritto misto, their little tentacles curling crisply around a pool of garlickypungent tzatsiki. They tasted exactly like batter and tzatsiki. Yum.

Back at the table (this was still our first plateful - we didn't notice the grime on the soy sauce bottle yet) we poked warily at the brown gobs with our chopsticks. Mine was in a smallish shell, belying the fact that it was a gooeysaucecovered monster which popped easily from its anchor and wobbled menacingly in front of my lips. I waited for my friend to pry hers off the shell - it slipped and slithered out of her grasp, refusing to let go of its crusty bed. I was losing my nerve. With a deep breath I shoved the entire mess in my mouth - "this is how you do this, right?" I asked through the black bean sauce. No one had an answer.
It was too big to swallow whole; chewing was in order. I bit down and felt an oozing, an unpleasant gushing across my tongue. The face across the table from me mirrored my grimace. It tasted like the smell of Prince Edward Island's south shore when the tide is out. The smell right where the river runs in and the sign says the shellfish are contaminated and should not be dug. Or eaten. That rotten seaweed stench was in liquid form IN MY MOUTH and I was in public and COULD NOT SPIT. To make my oral holiday complete came the grinding scrunch of sand between my teeth. The face across the table from me started to giggle. I wondered where that promising black bean sauce had gone - all I could taste was muddy ocean and sandy snot.

At some point I mashed the hideous creature enough to swallow it. At some point my friend must have eaten her oyster as well, but I honestly can't even remember now. The mussel was worse - tough and rubbery and agonizingly fishy beneath its melted cheddar blanket... the squid was somewhat less rubbery and delightfully peppery; I do indeed like squid.
The rest of the meal was a mixture of suspense and surprise - fried wonton skins encasing a shocking combination of cheeses and sweetness; mystery meat that didn't seem to get any smaller no matter how long one chewed. Very tasty garlic green beans.

In retrospect, it occurs to me that things like squid and shellfish, molluscs and crustaceans, were not really intended for food. They're the trash compactors of the sea. They're garden pests. At some point in time some starving mother, trying to salvage the last bit of lettuce for her starving children, became so enraged with the voracious snails that she snatched one up, snarled "this'll teach ya!" and popped it in her mouth. She knew it tasted revolting, she knew it may not be nourishing, but she felt slightly less hungry. Thus escargots were discovered. Like authentic Mexican food, people only ate that stuff because they couldn't afford decent food. And now just as there are entire dining establishments with sombreros and pepper lights serving leftovers and calling it "refried beans", people are paying ridiculous prices to consume what are in essence, giant water bugs. It's a prestige thing. Like, if one doesn't like seafood, one has poor taste. "Unepicurean". Well, I can tell the difference between Dove and Callebaut chocolates just by the mouthfeel. I can tell whether you've served me 36% or 18% cream in my coffee, and I can tell if it's Kicking Horse coffee by the smell as its brewing. Don't even try to tell me that there's decaf that tastes like the real thing! I'm secure enough in my good taste that I'll forgo the fanaticism of fruits de mer. Call me crazy, but I'll stick to ginger beef from now on.