My niece, Sophie, spent last week "down the shore" as they say in New Jersey. Her friend has a beach house, and they invited her to visit. Lucky! See? My sister was right; send your kid to an expensive private school, they get a superior education, meet the right people, and then get to spend their vacations with rich friends in nice places! My mom always said she was the smarter daughter.
So Soph was down the shore, and one night she texted me this: "I ate the most delicious thing I've ever eaten last night!" Wow, I thought, this must be something because Soph ate her first year of solid food in Rome, has traveled and eaten all over, has me as her aunt, and has the best palate of any kid I know, so I thought again, wow. Wonder what it was?
I imagined maybe someone pulled in a gorgeous striped bass or fluke right off the beach, and they roasted it over driftwood and seaweed on the beach and it was fresh and pristine and they ate it with flaky salt and the best olive oil, tiny sweet clams, local corn and tomatoes in some kind of food magazine seaside summer wet dream... I got really excited, as you can see. So I texted back, "wow, what?" And Soph... I had such high hopes, texts back, "It was tilapia stuffed with crabmeat and spinach!"
Well, I cried into my quinoa. Tilapia. King of the farmed, Foodiness fish. The free-range chicken nugget of the sea, the soy chip, the whole-wheat pop-tart, of the ocean. Tilapia is the nastiest, blandest, crappiest, garbage farmed fish on the planet. And yet, it's become the default fish on nearly every menu and at every seafood counter. It's everywhere, in everything. It's farmed, mainly in China and Latin America, and is filled with fungicides, fertilizer and pesticides, from its diet of corn, grains, and fish meal. It's garbage fish, fed garbage. And yet, it's everywhere. It's the boneless, skinless chicken breast of fish, but even worse. Do people not see that?
So there's poor Soph, well not really, (I mean she's down the shore, amirite?) out to dinner at some overpriced, Jersey shore fishhouse, all done up in decorative nets and glass buoys, (the restaurant, not Soph) with brass rails and nautical theme tchotchkas, sitting down to dinner.
And what's on the menu? Oh let's take a guess... Umm, salmon? Fer sure. Farmed salmon, from Chile, most likely. But the menu will say Atlantic salmon, because you can say whatever you want, on a menu. And probably grilled swordfish, possibly locally caught, but more likely not, and tuna, of course, Wouldn't be an American seaside restaurant without the ubiquitous block of seared rare tuna, probably illegally caught in defiance of all international restrictions on tuna fishing, flash frozen at sea and shipped to us. And let's see, what else, maybe shrimp? Broiled, scampi, fried? Farmed, farmed and farmed. Maybe in Thailand, again with the antibiotics, the chemicals, pesticides, pollution...
Oh wait, there's a flounder special! Flounder is local to New Jersey, let's order that! Quickly sautéed in butter 'til the edges are crisp, mmm, I love flounder. What? How is it made? Broiled with paprika? Yuck, what year is this? Okay, maybe that's a little harsh, I'll give them the B of the D, but then what about the effing tilapia?
And who let my niece eat that? Tilapia is fish for non-fish people. People who've never been exposed to a perfectly sautéed flounder filet or deftly grilled mackerel, who grew up in Iowa and hate fish for a reason, because they've never really EATEN fish; good fish, fresh and not broiled with margarine and paprika until it crumbles to dust.
I can't even ADDRESS the "stuffed with crabmeat and spinach" business, because A: what year is it? And B: Really? Crabmeat? More like processed crabstix, with an X on the end, because real, fresh crabmeat is over $25/lb so I'm sure Cap'n Billy's Seafood Bar and Grille isn't using the real deal, and C: just yuck.
Ok, ok, before you all start with the hate mail, telling me I'm an elitist, just stop. I am, but for good reason. It's not about me; it's about the fish, the poor, overfished fish. And our Fantasy Island way of still insisting on eating it when we're by the sea, or anywhere else. Just because I'm at a shore resort, where historically, or traditionally, you'd get to eat the local catch, hauled in off the docks and sold right to the kitchens, in some Steinbeck-ian, Cannery Row fantasy collective memory, doesn't mean that that's how we should keep on eating. I went to Cannery Row last summer, now basically an amusement park-seedy recreation of Stein
So Soph was down the shore, and one night she texted me this: "I ate the most delicious thing I've ever eaten last night!" Wow, I thought, this must be something because Soph ate her first year of solid food in Rome, has traveled and eaten all over, has me as her aunt, and has the best palate of any kid I know, so I thought again, wow. Wonder what it was?
I imagined maybe someone pulled in a gorgeous striped bass or fluke right off the beach, and they roasted it over driftwood and seaweed on the beach and it was fresh and pristine and they ate it with flaky salt and the best olive oil, tiny sweet clams, local corn and tomatoes in some kind of food magazine seaside summer wet dream... I got really excited, as you can see. So I texted back, "wow, what?" And Soph... I had such high hopes, texts back, "It was tilapia stuffed with crabmeat and spinach!"
Well, I cried into my quinoa. Tilapia. King of the farmed, Foodiness fish. The free-range chicken nugget of the sea, the soy chip, the whole-wheat pop-tart, of the ocean. Tilapia is the nastiest, blandest, crappiest, garbage farmed fish on the planet. And yet, it's become the default fish on nearly every menu and at every seafood counter. It's everywhere, in everything. It's farmed, mainly in China and Latin America, and is filled with fungicides, fertilizer and pesticides, from its diet of corn, grains, and fish meal. It's garbage fish, fed garbage. And yet, it's everywhere. It's the boneless, skinless chicken breast of fish, but even worse. Do people not see that?
So there's poor Soph, well not really, (I mean she's down the shore, amirite?) out to dinner at some overpriced, Jersey shore fishhouse, all done up in decorative nets and glass buoys, (the restaurant, not Soph) with brass rails and nautical theme tchotchkas, sitting down to dinner.
And what's on the menu? Oh let's take a guess... Umm, salmon? Fer sure. Farmed salmon, from Chile, most likely. But the menu will say Atlantic salmon, because you can say whatever you want, on a menu. And probably grilled swordfish, possibly locally caught, but more likely not, and tuna, of course, Wouldn't be an American seaside restaurant without the ubiquitous block of seared rare tuna, probably illegally caught in defiance of all international restrictions on tuna fishing, flash frozen at sea and shipped to us. And let's see, what else, maybe shrimp? Broiled, scampi, fried? Farmed, farmed and farmed. Maybe in Thailand, again with the antibiotics, the chemicals, pesticides, pollution...
Oh wait, there's a flounder special! Flounder is local to New Jersey, let's order that! Quickly sautéed in butter 'til the edges are crisp, mmm, I love flounder. What? How is it made? Broiled with paprika? Yuck, what year is this? Okay, maybe that's a little harsh, I'll give them the B of the D, but then what about the effing tilapia?
And who let my niece eat that? Tilapia is fish for non-fish people. People who've never been exposed to a perfectly sautéed flounder filet or deftly grilled mackerel, who grew up in Iowa and hate fish for a reason, because they've never really EATEN fish; good fish, fresh and not broiled with margarine and paprika until it crumbles to dust.
I can't even ADDRESS the "stuffed with crabmeat and spinach" business, because A: what year is it? And B: Really? Crabmeat? More like processed crabstix, with an X on the end, because real, fresh crabmeat is over $25/lb so I'm sure Cap'n Billy's Seafood Bar and Grille isn't using the real deal, and C: just yuck.
Ok, ok, before you all start with the hate mail, telling me I'm an elitist, just stop. I am, but for good reason. It's not about me; it's about the fish, the poor, overfished fish. And our Fantasy Island way of still insisting on eating it when we're by the sea, or anywhere else. Just because I'm at a shore resort, where historically, or traditionally, you'd get to eat the local catch, hauled in off the docks and sold right to the kitchens, in some Steinbeck-ian, Cannery Row fantasy collective memory, doesn't mean that that's how we should keep on eating. I went to Cannery Row last summer, now basically an amusement park-seedy recreation of Stein