Light Snacks Will Be Served

On travel, adoption, and living in fear of the word fusion.

The good folks at Travel + Leisure Asia allowed me to republish this essay I wrote for their September food issue, which is on newsstands now (go buy it -- writers need to eat!)

It's about labeling food, something that seems ever more slippery to me these days. But it's also about travel, and the thought processes of chefs, and what I think is (generally) a positive trend in the restaurant world: Chefs learning more about other ways of cooking, and subtly employing that knowledge. Enjoy. 

 

In Bangkok, I run a Thai restaurant. The food we serve, in my mind, is resolutely Thai (though there are aspects to the cooking process, and a few ingredients, that are not). I have always cringed when people told me, or when I read in a review, that my restaurant serves ‘fusion’ Thai – partly because of the detractive nature of the term, and partly because I don’t believe this to be true.

Gently, I’ve tried to bend the boundaries of Thai cooking – smoking something here, curing something there, putting Thai fried chicken on a Thai coconut waffle – without breaking them. Because I, like many others chefs, have lived in fear of the word fusion. But I’m not sure this word means much at all, anymore. Or if we, as chefs and consumers, should give it much weight.

Just like the word authentic (the flimsiest food descriptor of all), fusion is a deeply misleading term. Great cooking cultures – Thai for one, but also more recent cuisines in Australia, the Americas, Goa, South Africa – have evolved because of a tendency to absorb the ideas, ingredients, and techniques of migrating cooks. So when do we stop, erm, fusing?

 If one wants to cook traditional recipes, that’s just fine with me. And I firmly believe the world’s great cooking cultures should be guarded for posterity. But it doesn’t mean we all ought to cook exactly what we grew up eating. Imagine a world where cooking didn’t cross-pollinate – a tomato-less Italy, a China without chilies, a Bangkok without woks. It’s depressing.

My recent trip to Spain reinforced the notion that the fine dining world has moved beyond a fear of fusion. This began in Girona, at a restaurant called El Cellar de Can Roca.

“The first course, the amuse,” my waiter explained, “represents the chef’s most recent travels around the world,” as he presented me with spheres of food, perched on a steel structure, like gumballs roosting on a leafless tree. I wondered if there was a tinge of irony, or even jealousy, in his monotone, as he introduced this work of edible experience.

My first bite, a taste of Korea which I plucked from the top branch, rudely awoke a palate that had been lazing for days on sheep cheese and buttery ham and subtle, olive oil-soaked seafood. Suddenly, I struggled with a mouthful of pungent miso. Pow!

The next bite took us to Beirut, I believe, then Mexico, then Morocco. But it wasn’t until the chef – who was raised in his family’s Girona restaurant, studying classic Catalan food – was on more familiar ground that his cooking began to resonate. I remembered most the meal’s small, informative turns on flavor, like a delicately smoked sliver of anchovy swimming in a soup of gingered cherry and amaretto, and crispy lamb breast with forest mushrooms poking through a pillow of creamed morels, but I quickly forgot the miso ball.

Until I returned to Asia, and began to unpack my own experiences in this essay.

I would like to think that mainstream cooking – not the dreamy three-star stuff above but everyday restaurant cooking – is on the cusp of real change. A time when people will stop uttering that tired, “fusion, confusion” analogy under their breath and accept that food is essentially formless; it is an interchangeable medium that does not necessarily lose its unique character if it borrows another ingredient, or technique, from a place far away. Because now, we often venture far away. Most people didn’t used to – and most especially working-class cooks.  

We talk of a global economy, of global food shortages and international migrations, but rarely do people talk about this apparition that is global cuisine. Unless it’s negative. Some of that is well-deserved, especially during the salad days of fusion, where a squirt of Sriracha or the sting of wasabi was used clumsily by uninformed cooks and promulgated by restaurant chains. Bad fusion food abounds in Bangkok, where recent culinary graduates splatter pizza or spaghetti with something that sort of tastes Thai. But serious chefs have figured out how to use each others’ arsenal of ingredients, and well.

And so, quietly, many are cooking whatever they feel like, unannounced. Because they know more about what they’re doing than we do, we don’t notice as much.

There are, as far as I can tell, two opposing schools of thought when it comes to cooking. Those that think that our culinary order hangs in the balance as soon as the simplest traditions are tweaked, and those that put miso paste in butter because it tastes really good.

And on my last trip through Spain, most of the memorable meals I ate were cooked by chefs that fell into the latter category. There was a crisp, tiny cone filled with the silky insides of a ripe tomato at Tickets, in Barcelona, that slowly rose above the ordinary with the quiet heat of grated wasabi. It was there, but you had to seek it out in your head, as Albert Adria must have when he created the dish. And a rabbit taco, an elegant little tapa stuffed with braised rabbit in a gentle cumin and chili braise, like Mexico viewed in soft, Mediterranean twilight. These geographical leaps felt nothing but natural.

There are many reasons Spain has emerged as a world leader in gastronomy – it’s a combination of great product, innovation, climate, history and a strong traditional food culture. But, in my mind, it’s the lack of dogma in their modern cooking that has allowed Spain to move so far forward, so fast.  While France eased into the idea of adoption, Spain had already thrown open their doors to spices, sensations, molecular techniques and whatever else might push their food forward. Labels be damned. Delicious was the measuring stick.

Which brings me back to my original point – travel is changing the way we cook, the depth of our understanding, and the ingredients chefs choose to use in restaurants. Nowhere in Europe was this more apparent to me than in San Sebastian – a place steeped in Basque traditions, that remains open to most anything.

As I wound through the old town I passed cooking stores with hand-forged Japanese sushi knives in the windows, and Asian basket steamers. There was that old-school mishmash of Gallic and Spanish, too – the chocolatiers and cheese shops and baguettes and olive oils and hams. And then I went to Arzak for lunch.

Elena Arzak, the proprietor of this legendary Basque restaurant, led me through her 100,000 bottle wine cellar. But what fascinated me most was their spice room – 1200 different flavors, neatly catalogued, at the disposal of chefs who work exclusively on recipe development.

The meal was one of the best I’ve ever had, and often surprised me – a chunk of goat cheese was offset by the astringent glow of turmeric, silky foie gras was encased in crisp seaweed, like a lighter, umami-laced tempura. But the local products were what opened my eyes. There was a sardine speared atop a ripe strawberry, and an unspeakably delicious dish of beef tongue and dover sole. After the meal I told Juan-Mari Arzak and his daughter Elena what I loved best, and she smiled. “We have 10, sometimes 15 visiting chefs in our kitchen. They come to cook, on their vacation. And they notice simple things like you, things we think are normal they think are fantastic, and this excites me.”   

That night, I wound through the famous pintxos bars of the old town, drinking wine and hopping from bar to bar. And there were so many little sidesteps on tradition that I forget them all. A scoop of mole-flavored ice cream atop a pig’s ear terrine; a pork rib braised in sweet fruit and cumin like a tagine; a grilled prawn with the subtle scent of lemongrass.

My last meal in Basque country was at Azurmendi, in Bilbao. It’s a stunning place, but what sets it apart is Chef Eneko Axta’s precise yet playful approach to Basque classics.  As we slurped an oyster, for instance, a waft of sea mist drifted across the table, as water plucked from the Bay of Biscay was poured over dry ice and purple seaweed. Does that sound pretentious? Because it’s not. It’s surreal, like eating an oyster in a secreted cave.

After the meal, Axta took me upstairs to his greenhouse to show me his peas, which are picked at night, and cooked in a jelly made from the fat of the world’s best ham. “I’m coming to Bangkok this fall, I think” he said, “would you show me around, and can we cook?”

“Yes, of course.”

And if all goes right, sometime next year, long after this article is published, as diners overlook the vineyards outside of Bilbao, a waft of kaffir lime rind might slither across a white tablecloth, like a jungle vine. Here in Bangkok, a slice of raw fish might find itself perched upon a strawberry. And if we both do it right, people won’t call it fusion as they eat. They’ll nod their heads, as if it always was.

Why is the food in San Sebastian so good? (Part one in a series)

I can't remember the first time I heard about the Basque town of Donostia (usually referred to, in Spanish, as San Sebastian). It might have been in a food magazine, or on the tip of a chef's tongue in some impassioned, late-night discussion about where the best place in the world might be to eat. But there it was, buried in my psyche, a promise of delicious things. It remained there for years; an itch unscratched.

There are plenty of stories scattered across the internet that explain, mostly with wonderment, about how good the eating is in this part of Basque country. And the reason is simple, I think: People here really and truly care about cooking and product. Perhaps more then anything else. The parade of cooking celebrities and shower of Michelin stars didn’t happen by chance; the movement began to simmer a long time ago, in basement taverns, and aging seafood halls, in gastronomic societies. And you need to see that first, before it all comes into focus.

Donostia is a town built on the foundations of a food culture both sophisticated and primal – there is decorum and fine dining; dark taverns where drunks munch on tiny sandwiches and sip watery beer; there are the vineyards and butchers and fishmongers and wonderful chocolate and pastry shops; there are foreigners and Basque folk foraging side-by-side for the best pintxos through the tunneling restaurants of the old town; and there is the cold sea and the green mountains that supply what might be the second-best market in Spain. From the second we arrived, I was smitten.

For the past two weeks I’ve been turning this idea over in my mind – what makes the food here better than anywhere else? And instead of answering that, I’ll just tell you what I ate at a seafood restaurant.

About thirty minutes from San Sebastian, through the mountains and then around the foggy coast, is a town called Getaria. Vineyards that produce tart, Txakoli grapes hug the hillsides that look down over an old church and a wide elbow of sand. There is a harbor for fishing boats. And a restaurant called Elkano, and a fashion museum.

I was told that I must eat at Elkano by Eneko Axta, a prodigiously talented chef whose brilliant cooking I would later try at Azurmendi, in Bilbao. The Chef told me that this was “classic Basque seafood cooking – the best kind.”  

                                                      The grill at Elkano

When we entered the restaurant at 2pm it was empty – it started to fill at about 3, which apparently is fish time in Getaria. The menu is spare. There are several fish to choose from, all fresh from the local fleet docked outside, a few starters, and your meal begins with bread and good olive oil.

Owner/manager Pedro Aitor approached us and warmly explained the seafood available. Then, he asked if I minded bones, and when I shook my head, his eyes lit up. “The red mullet is here, now, only for a few weeks,” he said, smiling. “It is the one from under the rocks, the small, sweet red mullet. Everyone here orders turbot, but for me, the red mullet from the reef close to shore speaks of this season, of the spring. I would never serve one from the deep sea, these are the babies, the first of the year.” His eyes were distant, and I wondered if he was looking at the sea when he spoke, addressing it as much as us. 

So we order red mullet. And hake throats (kokotxas), which he says “are our favorite thing to eat, and only one per fish.” The throats are done three ways, lightly fried with an egg batter, grilled and grilled and served with a mild salsa verde. We also order squid, grilled with ink sauce “only one boat fishes for squid now, in Getaria, and we get the best catch.” Also, a bottle of Verdejo from Rueda, brisk and very bright, from pre-Phyloxera vines, crisp and cold like the afternoon outside.

The hake throats, gelatinous with a wisp of smoke from the grill, are wobbly, saline bites. Strangely, as I eat them, I’m reminded of China – of the sea cucumber and shark fin and fish maw that takes their place at the Chinese table because of texture rather than taste. Except that these hake throats, like the juicy, mild flesh of the fish, do taste pretty good.

The meal got better from there. The red squid was served beside a stripe of ink cooked with salt and onion; it was tender and only adorned with salt, cooked as perfectly as one is able to. Living in Thailand, I eat a lot of squid, which is often charred or chewy; none is as tender and simple as this. My wife and I smiled between bites and sips of wine, realizing this is one of those meals we’re never going to forget.

Then, although all the other tables are digging into large, flat turbot crisp around the fins, we are presented with two tiny, tender red mullet. The owner encourages me to suck the juice and brain from its skull and I do.

Have you ever sucked out the contents of a prawn’s head – one that’s fresh and fatty? It was like that, but better. Like the first breath you take after a long drive that ends at the edge of the ocean. Like sea urchin butter. Like red mullet brains, the first of the year, from under the rocks.

The flesh of the little fish was firm and sweet, tight like crabmeat, and again it wasn’t sauced or spiced, merely salted. The final flourish was a black piece of slate, with a slash of tart apple sauce, and on it sat the barely seared livers of the fish we were eating. It was delicate and rich, just a nibble, and it left me wanting more.

Which I do now, and always will, until I get back to Elkano.

(Part two, on mushrooms and pintxos, beef and spring lamb, coming sometime in the relatively near future)

 

                                                        The beach at Getaria

 

A Quick Note on Service in Paris: New Versus Old School

There is nothing so intimidating as a Parisian waiter glowering at you as you fumble through a menu.  I find myself lucky; I speak a few languages and so my mind is more malleable than those who speak one. Four years of Latin, and a career in the food industry helps too. I can read French menus -- I just can't make them come out of my mouth with any measure of grace.

Many overworked Parisian waiters seem to enjoy the pain visitors feel when ordering food. It's like a sprikling of schadenfreude in their mundane workday. I can sympathize to a certain extent -- many waiters are working eight or ten tables at once, far too many, and most of those tables are populated by foreigners. But then my mind turns to my own servers in Bangkok, who do the same job with mostly foreign clientele, without a hint of pretension, or worse, disgust. C'est la vie.

But I saw signs of change in Parisian service, and it was directly related to the age of those running the restaurants. In old-school brasseries and bistros with repute, the service was brusque at best and downright scornful at worst. The food allows one to (mostly) forget. But at two of Paris' newest and most promising restaurants, my wife and I were welcomed with the sort of casual grace that defines great service today. At Septime and Agape Substance we were greeted, served, and soothed by a kind of conviviality that was almost unnerving after eating elsewhere in town. 

I think that both of these places should be commeded for that; they are fashionable, they are modern, they are hard to get into, but they are also respectful of customers and mindful of the language gap. This seemed to me like a great departure from the old-school scowl and 'pffft!' that one often encounters.

It was a mark of prefessionalism and a desire to make people enjoy not just the food and the wine but the philosophy at work behind it. And today, no matter where you are, that's exactly what it takes to make it.  

 

La Cagouille

Before travelling, I ask people whom I trust where I should eat. Especially when going to a place like Paris, which is so dense with restaurants one might never know. And at the end of a friend's email on that subject, there were a few lines that went something like this: "Near Montparnasse there's a fish restaurant called La Cagouille. Unassuming. Very good seafood. And it's open on Sunday."

La Cagouille was then forgotten.

But two Sundays past, in Paris, my wife and I found ourselves wandering around hungrily. The cheese shop I had found the day before was shuttered, scrapping our plans for a picnic. And then I remembered the email, and the seafood restaurant that was open on Sunday. And so we jumped in a taxi and zoomed across town on a crisp, clear afternoon. 

La Cagouille is unassuming. There are understated nautical touches in the dining room, there's a simple patio, and it's located in a recently constructed apartment building on a quiet residential street. It does not magically transport you to the Paris of accordions, roses and cobblestones. In fact, it feels more like a chain restaurant somewhere in Boston. 

Then the first course comes. Cockels, swimming in Breton butter. You scoop the tiny shellfish up and slurp the sweet, tiny pieces of meat. If you're me, you then use the shell as a ladel to pour butter in your mouth. 

After that, the mussels arrived, which were thrown on a hot iron plate to ease open, then simply dusted with sea salt. They were tender and sweet and as we drank a bottle of white wine from the Rhone that was perfectly complimentary my eyes started to roll back into my head.

Then the Fines de Claires were thrust in front of us, freshly shucked, and as I squeezed a half lemon atop them their edges slowly curled up in the sunlight.  The oysters were so rich and briny, so expressive of a cold, clean sea, that I shivered as they slid down my throat. "That's the most intoxicating thing I've ever eaten," muttered my wife. I smiled at her, gulped more white wine, and grunted affirmatively.

The final thing we ate that afternoon -- an afternoon meal which neither of us will forget because of the perfect combination of summer sun and tastes -- was a plate of grilled sardines. Each table of middle-aged Parisians was picking at the little fish and so we followed suit.

The rich, oily fish slid of the bone and melted in your mouth. The fish were also, gleefully, slicked with butter. There was smoke and sea and salt that was about it, and it was about the best thing one could ever eat. And we did, hushed, scraping meat from the feathery bones. And as we finished the meal I felt a rush of sadness, because I knew that I wouldn't eat anything so elementally good in a very long time.

Then we left the restaurant and walked through a market where painters sold bright canvasses and odd sculpture and moody photographs. But my mind was still spinning from the beauty of the food. 

Stuck inside of Bangkok, with the Paris blues, again.

So the story goes like this: 

You don't go on a lot of vacations when you work in the food business. Since I hung up the writing spurs and did this thing, I left exactly once for a four day trip to China for a (beautiful) wedding. There was a pipe-dream escape to Spain in May that never happened, for several reasons. And it all began to build up, the frustration and the heat and wet of Bangkok and the hours and the fact that I haven't left Asia in two years. And then I had a dream. My wife and I were eating oysters in some unknown Parisian brasserie, out on the sidewalk, and it was all so perfect in my intangible, dreamy belief, until I woke up and opened my eyes and saw the heavy rain falling on the palm trees outside.

I booked tickets that morning.

"Fuck it, you gotta go sometime," I thought. "And now you don't have a choice."

And so we went. And it was sublime.

And there were oysters.

(More to come on what we ate and where, and also a bit about my new little project at Soul Food Mahanakorn)

 

A Quick Note on the Patpong Sex Show

This note is for readers of this blog who might visit Bangkok someday, and might be tempted to indulge in that strange ritual that is the Patpong ping-pong show. It has become part of the Thailand tourism 'experience,' so much so that almost every friend that swings through town believes they ought to see this bizarre sexual theatre. I try to talk them out of it, and if that doesn't work they end up going on their own. But last night I went with guests. And it was the worst 15 minutes I have ever spent in Thailand. Period. 

In a dingy, blacklit room that smelled of piss and cigarettes, we watched 5 disinterested women well into middle age do strange things with eggs and needles and glow-in-the-dark rings. It's boring and rather sad, but that's not the worst part. 

The place that we happened upon was not a safe place to be, evidenced by the shouting matches between clients (usually foreign tourist couples, sometimes with kids) who were getting ripped off to the tune of $250 (Yes, that is 8000 baht) for a couple beers. If you don't pay, you're surrounded by shouting women who don't let you out, as well as a few thick-armed thugs who glower and guard the door. It's pure intimidation and extortion, in a dark, strange, disorienting room. Police are not allowed in (they carded my Thai friend to make sure he wasn't police) and you really have no legal or personal protection once you're inside. I assume most people pay and get the hell out. 

After about 10 minutes of watching this, and getting dripped on by a leaky air-conditioner (liquid in a run-down strip club ain't cool) we decided to leave. There was a glass on our table of orange soda with a straw in it. It wasn't ours and I moved it to an empty table. In that glass was the scam -- that orange soda cost 3200 Baht, or about $98. After arguing with a Thai woman who spoke to me with a ferocity that gave me goosebumps, we paid for what we drank (400 baht for 4 beers) and left. A bouncer shoved me around a little bit on the way out for good measure, and that woman told me to 'shut my mouth' about her scam. They attempted to charge us eight times our bar tab for that single orange soda. I was sober throughout, which made the visit even less pleasant.

To all who think this is 'part of the Bangkok experience' I assure you it's not. There's nothing Thai about it, actually: Thais don't scream at guests, they don't intimidate tourists, and they certainly don't pull sharp things out of their private parts. The only thing that's Thai about it are your own preconceived notions (which some unsavory characters will happily indulge for financial gain). It's also disgusting, and can be dangerous. 

If you want to experience the rougher side of Thai culture, go to a kickboxing fight and sit high in the stands at Lumphini Stadium. Place a bet or two with the bookies if you want, drink some cold Chang from plastic cups, dig the old music and watch the rats scurry beneath rickety stands. You'll lose a lot less money, and have a lot more fun.       

Southern Markets

I quickly snapped this image while wading through one of the most interesting markets I've seen in Thailand, in a small town just outside of Nakhorn Si Thammerat. The market was beside the highway there, and inside an even mix of Muslims and Buddhists traded in meats, an amazing array of fish, and fruits and leaves and flowers. But this shot of hooves stood out, and so I share it with you. Much more on my culinary adventures in the south of Thailand coming soon.  

 

The Twilight of the Trishaw

There aren't that many trishaws left in Thailand, anymore. Motorbikes are simply too cheap and too convenient, and are widely used as taxis these days, forcing out the hard working pedicab drivers. But whenever I see one, if I'm not in a hurry, I flag it down. The slow ramble of a pedicab is probably the best way to see a small Southeast Asian city (not Bangkok... I wouldn't wish that on anyone). You have time to take in the scenery, make mental notes, take photos, and smell the flowers. Seriously. You can smell flowers when you ride in a trishaw. 

Some of my fondest memories of my time in Chengdu, Sichuan, were late nights spent wobbling across potholes with a Snow Beer and good friends, in the back of these three wheeled bikes (bet you don't remember, AGP).  They also remind me of Penang, and the south of India, and what is probably the most interesting trishaw town of all, Lhasa. High in the Himalaya, trishaw riders have their own language of whistles - one means 'I'm passing from behind', another 'turning left, or right.' In a trishaw, you have time to whistle where you're headed. 

Above is a photo of my latest trishaw driver, Pit, who pedaled us around Nakhorn Si Thammerat this week. He is 74-years-old. As we slowly rolled through the charming provincial city, dotted with temples and mosques, he waved and smiled to almost every person we passed. You also have time to make friends, when you drive a trishaw.   

Ramen and Green Curry? Nah

In this otherwise great article on ramen in Tokyo, the NYT's frugal traveler Matt Gross writes: 

"Basanova specialized in green curry ramen, a clever adaptation of Thai flavors to Japanese tastes. It was fascinating to slurp, at once vibrant with the heat of chilies and the aromas of lemon grass and kaffir lime, but at heart a classic Japanese ramen. You won’t find this in Bangkok."

I'm not a stickler when it comes to fusion, but green curry soup noodles aren't found in Bangkok because they're not a very good idea. Green curry, in fact, isn't found in any soup whatsoever, because it is a thick coconut-based curry, and not a soup. A small amount is eaten atop rice, because it is rich with coconut cream and very spicy. Trust me, if it was tasty to eat a whole bowl of it, the Thais would be eating green curry soup noodles all over the place; this definitely isn't a cooking culture bound by orthodoxy or health concerns. 

Green curry is found atop kanom jeen noodles, though, which are soft and sweet, cool and springy - not unlike soba - which, dare I say, would make a much better medium for a splash of green curry than a huge, steaming bowl of ramen.  

Sweetbreads, Fish Heads

 

Last night, in Singapore's Durian-inspired Esplanade Theatre, I saw Andrew Bird put on a show. Bird is one of those rare performers that sounds almost exactly the same live as he does on albums, which might have to do with the fact that he's playing all of the instruments both live and on his albums. 

So Bird's up there punching pedals with his feet, looping tumbleweed whistles with staccato violin plucketry and mournful pulls on his bow and guitar chords and all sorts of other noises into what finally evolves into something like a band's wall of sound. It's pretty fascinating to watch. 

And then he played a song called Gray Matter, which he originally wrote as a song called Sweetbreads, and he sang it as it was on the original. Which has chorus that goes like this: "They call them sweetbreads, I could taste what you were thinking, ooooh, sweetbreads, that's the taste of neurons blinking."  

But before the song, the shy and sort-of-awkward performer said something (I'm paraphrasing here) like this: "This song is about tasting the brain, and, well, I rewrote it because I thought it was kind of upsetting. But, you know, we eat animal's hearts, and brains, and places where the soul is said to reside, and don't really talk about the implications of that very much. But we probably should, you know?"

I love eating sweetbreads, which come from the thymus or the pancreas of hoofed mammals, but that's not why I kept turning Bird's words over in my head. It also wasn't because I was stoned, because I was in a concert hall in Singapore. 

As he plucked his violin strings and sang of sweetbreads I thought about all the hearts and brains and feet I've eaten, and how even when you're eating them you don't really consider what that thing was doing a few hours or days before. And I made a note to think about it the next time I ate something in which "the soul was said to reside." And I did, at lunch, the very next day. 

I'm not crazy about Singapore's food like some people are (I find much of it is greasy, one-dimensional,  and sort of overrated). But I'm hip to the fact that there's some great cooking going on here too. And when I come to Singapore, the first thing I want to eat is curry fish head. Today, at the famous Banana Leaf Apolo I got my fix, as Bird's words fluttered around in my head. Looks like Mel Gibson has too.

But I digress. The fish's flesh was firm and sweet, the sour tamarind curry was fiery and complex, and really I couldn't imagine a better lunch. And as i plucked off the fatty, tender cheek of the fish, I considered it swimming around in the deep, scarfing up so many small creatures. I felt great privilege to be eating such a formidable looking fish's head; a head that would probably go to waste in the West. It just might just be where that animal's soul resides, I thought, because it's definitely the most delicious part of the fish. 

So, anyways, that's the taste of my neurons blinking.