Photo by Dana Tentis on Pexels
Today, I had a lovely lunch with a former colleague at the Summer Shack in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I ordered the grilled shrimp plate, which came with supremely crispy french fries and two skewers of charred shrimp drowned in a garlic butter sauce.
Tasty, you’re probably thinking. Well, if you had known me when I was growing up, you would realize that I have traveled quite a long way from the seafood hater that I used to be. You see, I was the world’s pickiest eater, and I can almost feel the dry heaves I would get when even the smallest of whiffs of seafood aroma drifted my way.
I absolutely despised seafood as a child. This was a complete shock to my Filipina mother, of course. She would have fish cooked in every method imaginable: fish soup, grilled fish, fried fish, sauteed fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish for dinner. Fish for lunch. And, yes, fish for breakfast.
Of course, I tried it as a child, but that flavor, a flavor that I know now is the lovely brine of the ocean, that flavor of the sea was so different from the hot dogs, mac and cheese, and chicken nuggets that I was used to. It curdled my stomach.
One particular memory perfectly encapsulates my seafood trauma. For six years, I lived in Okinawa, Japan. During one of those years, I went on a field trip to a small island. It was a cultural field trip, so we had to eat all manner of new-to-me foods. Pickled vegetables and fresh sashimi were constant side dishes to our meals. I was always so thankful for the steaming bowls of hot white rice that came with our meals. We were strongly encouraged to eat the sashimi, and I barely managed to choke it down by taking the tiniest of slivers and burying it deep down into an enormous ball of rice and then eating that.
One day, just as I was about to tuck into that glorious bland bowl of hot rice, a teacher came by and cracked a raw egg over it. My adult self remembering this would have loved the chance to have the heated rice slowly cook the fresh egg, but my childhood self sat back in horror! Not my delicious rice, no!
The topper to my seafood trauma for the trip was our final night on the island. We all sat in groups around bonfires at night on the beach. It was a truly magical setting; the sun had set, and you could hear the waves crashing to the shore. We were all over excited, sharing our day’s adventures and cracking each other up with jokes. The moon was bright, and all our happy sunburned faces flickered in the crackling firelight.
We laughed innocently as teachers stopped by each bonfire to deliver a package to us: a freshly caught whole fish. Now what in the world were we supposed to do with this? The fish was packaged up with a sharpened stick. Ah, I realized that we were meant to skewer our silvery fish onto the stick and roast them over the fires we sat around, like sleek, scale-covered marshmallows.
I hunched over in despair. But I looked around and noticed that other kids were quickly burying their fish portions in the sand. Just as I was about to do the same, a teacher came and sat down right next to me to eat. Oh dear. I was not to be saved from my wretched fate.
Fast-forward to college. I was still not eating seafood. But I soon met my husband-to-be, and he loved seafood. He took me out to an expensive and fancy-schmancy seafood restaurant in an attempt to impress me. Of course, he’d only just met me, and didn’t know my abject terror at anything dredged up from the sea. But, I was quickly growing to love this man, so I gathered all my courage and bit into the pale white fish cheeks that had been served to me.
And they were the most delicious things I had ever tasted. Fresh and briny and light and just pure wonder in every bite. How had I missed out on this for so many years of my life? And when I moved in with him to Boston, I indulged in even more seafood: fried calamari, clam chowder, lobster rolls and bisque, fish soup, shrimp scampi, crab cakes. An entire cornucopia of delicious seafood.
I don’t know why I had never liked seafood as a child. My mother is a wonderful cook, and her seafood was always delicious, I’m sure. I sometimes think that maybe I was a supertaster. I feel like flavors were super intense for me. It could also have been a control thing. I wanted to have control over what I put into my body, and having people insist that I try something only made me want to dig my heels in even more.
Regardless of the reasoning, I am now an unabashed seafood lover. I am still trying to chase down the perfect sole meunière, and I will almost always order the seafood option when I go out to eat.
How about you? Are you a seafood lover or hater? Share in the comments below.
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