There was something fishy about the menu, though dinner went
swimmingly
The look on my wife’s face let me know how she felt about the
news that we would be eating dinner at Phil’s Fish Market in Moss
Landing.
An adventurous eater she is not. She’ll eat any vegetable and
most pasta, but if it isn’t beef, chicken or pork, it’s not
touching her plate.
There was something fishy about the menu, though dinner went swimmingly
The look on my wife’s face let me know how she felt about the news that we would be eating dinner at Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing.
An adventurous eater she is not. She’ll eat any vegetable and most pasta, but if it isn’t beef, chicken or pork, it’s not touching her plate.
My dad, who invited us to the meal since we were already in Castroville for a basketball game, assured her that there were other, non-fishy items on the menu, so she politely accepted his kind offer with a look of trepidation.
She was not going to order the cioppino or the squid platter, but a salad or burger wasn’t out of the question.
On the adventurous eating scale, I’m a bit above my wife – with conditions. I’ll eat fish as long as it’s not fishy-tasting. Grilled halibut or blackened swordfish are delicious, as is a tuna fillet. Shrimp is great, grilled or fried, and clam chowder is a Friday treat. These items don’t smell or taste fishy to me, so they are acceptable.
Salmon, which smells and tastes like fish (because it is), is not something I’ll order. You can hide squid under bread and deep fry it and call it calamari, but it’s still slimy squid, and that ain’t happening on my dinner plate.
As we approached the counter at Phil’s, which was jumping with activity because of its renowned menu of fresh-catch items, my wife’s face again showed her emotion. She could not see past the shrimp and clams and crab and cod. She saw pasta, but it included seafood; she saw sandwiches, but their ingredients came from the nearby Monterey Bay. There was top sirloin steak, but it seemed a bit much for a quick meal.
Things seemed fishy, and she was chicken to try anything.
I ordered a tuna fillet with a salad, rice and bread, figuring it would be disingenuous to go to a fish market and not order something from the sea. I added on a local specialty, fried artichoke hearts with an Italian dipping sauce. Our oldest son, who is an adventurous eater, went for the old stand-by and had salmon. Our youngest son, whose palate closely matches that of his mother, ordered what she did – a hamburger. Boring.
That’s like going to KFC and ordering grilled, not fried, chicken, or going to Round Table just for the salad bar, which is good, but not pepperoni and mushroom deep-dish good.
Our sons’ friend went for a Phil’s specialty – a bowl of cioppino, complete with a plastic bib. When you have to wear a bib while eating, that screams adventure.
All around us, seafood lovers rejoiced in the fresh bounty of the sea laid before them on their plates. They cracked crab and slurped oysters and cut butter-soft fish filets with their forks. It was heaven for them. For my wife, it was purgatory.
As those of us who ordered fish marveled at the flavor and texture of our dishes, she methodically ate her burger. I offered her a bite of my grilled tuna, and she reluctantly tasted it. Then she reluctantly realized that she liked it and indicated she would even order it if she were ever in such a fishy situation again.
A few days later, at Benihana’s in Monterey, my wife ate a couple bites of grilled shrimp and our younger son ate a whole plate of the stuff. They branched out and expanded their palates, proving that sometimes when something seems fishy, that can be a good thing.
Adam Breen writes a blog at http://thebreenblog.blogspot.com and teaches newspaper and journalism classes at San Benito High School. He is a reporter for The Pinnacle and former editor of the Free Lance. E-mail him at [email protected].
