WINNIE: What's that? Looks like some kind of animal.
A blond wooden plank is placed on the white tablecloth. One end carries a groove with a large serving spoon. The other end carries the animal...what is it? The gray, mottled skin is smooth, shiny, elastic. Unkosher. A stingray? A Picasso-eyed turbot?
No, wait -- it's upside down. It's a fish head, a cod's to be exact. With big old fish lips and spiky little teeth. And it's looking at Winnie. Or it would be, except the place where the eye would be has been meticulously carved out like a jack-o-lantern. Visage sans les yeux...
Our neighbors crane their necks with curiosity. I pick up the plank and tilt it towards them so they can get a good eyeful. And then we dig in. The excess of clear collagen in the unctuous collar would make Megan Fox's lips blush. A flap of gelatinous skin reveals a succulent cheek, larger and silkier than a scallop. The meat along the forehead falls away from the curved skull, sweet and soft. We pluck translucent, flexible bones from the flesh, deconstructing the cod's face until all that's left is a pile of deflated derma and the fish's puffy pout.
Of course the two Asian ladies would devour a fish head. How did Chef know we would happily accept this double dare? And who else could they possibly have been saving it for?
NEIGHBORS: What did it taste like?
ME: Unctuous. Gelatinous. Fatty.
NEIGHBORS: Like the veal marrow?
ME: Yes, like the veal marrow.
That veal marrow melted in its own trough, a limb bone sawed in half lengthwise and topped with black bubbles of American caviar. Graphic, sure, but also conscious. Gustatorial decadence in the summer sometimes means infanticide, said Winnie -- the baby cow, the unborn sturgeon eggs, the embryonic zucchini with the blossom caul. If we're going to take life for hedonistic pleasure, we should exalt it by recognizing it for what it once was, or maybe what it could have been.
There's probably no better way to face the creature you eat than by eating its face.
--
*Disclosure: We both know the chef and though we didn't tell him we were coming, we ran into him when we arrived at the restaurant. Though we've never revealed any affinity for fish face to him before.





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