How to Properly Eat Overcooked Salmon

By Fionn mac Cumhaill

To eat a properly overcooked piece of salmon, which is remarkably difficult to do at home, requires you to go out to eat. But you can’t just go anywhere, no. You must locate the fanciest restaurant in your town. Any place without a white table cloth and seven different forks won’t do because they will serve you a voluptuous, moist, mouth-watering piece of perfectly cooked fish. So you find the most expensive restaurant you can and you then want to go online and make a reservation. Nowadays you have to do it online- calling on the phone is no longer acceptable. Some places still allow you to do it over the phone but then you end up with a table by the restroom or the front door. So instead, as many learn the hard way, you go online to make your reservation, and it behooves you to give yourself a good hour to an hour and a half to accomplish this feat. This requires navigating 37 different screens, getting rejected numerous times, and finally having to call, only to get belittled and rebuffed by the AI customer service agent, Janice. After two hours and yelling at the computer and two shots of Kettle One, you finally manage to get two seats in a decent section of the establishment.

Next, you have to find the proper attire to meet the dress code so you aren’t turned away at the door. For a woman, dressing up is an ordeal that requires at least half a day to accomplish. The other half of the day is explaining to the husband or boyfriend that a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers is not permitted and he must wear business casual. This does not go over well. Demanding, pleading and finally hinting about possible after dinner sex gets him away from the television. 

“Not that shirt! It’s too wrinkled and I don’t have time to iron. Wear the one I just bought you,” she says.

“To think I could enjoy one night at home with fish that isn’t dry and covered in some exaggerated sauce,” he says to himself.

“Did you say something,” his wife says from the bathroom.

“Just clearing my throat," he says.

“You need a sport coat, too,” she says.

“What are we going to, a funeral?” He asks. There is no response to that.

He is ready in six minutes. She still has to try on 11 different outfit combinations, apply the 29 layers of makeup, gripe over shoes, redo the makeup, curl the hair,  straighten it, curl it again, change the outfit, have a good cry, redo the makeup and make her husband change his shirt.

Both are now ready to go to the car.

“Did  you take the dog out?” She asks her husband.

“No. I was watching the end of the game,” he says.

“You knew we were in a rush,” she says.

“What? I was ready two hours ago?” He says.

“Excuse me?” She says. No response. He isn’t positive but he thinks he may have heard a growl come from the powder room.

You get to the restaurant, sit, and order drinks. No bread comes. Not anymore, not like it used to. Now, you have to ask for bread and they only bring out two or three small pieces and enough butter for one.

The fancier the restaurant the longer it takes to get drinks. If you don’t believe me go to one, order a beer and time it yourself. Then go to Hooters, order a beer, and see how long it takes to get to your table.

Fancy restaurants with dress codes and no games on the TVs are for the women. Men go to these establishments to placate their wives.

I remember the last time I was in NYC, the girls wanted to go to a specific bar. They wouldn’t let me in unless I took my Yankee hat off. I fought with them. They won. I drank overly priced beer, hatless. I generally avoid establishments that don't let me wear my Yankee hat if I so choose that evening. The point I’m trying to make is that nobody gives a shit about you, not really. Chew on that Ōmi for a few minutes.

Anyway, you finally get your drinks and order the food. She orders her salmon, medium cooked, and he orders steak, because men order steak in a place like this, even if you don’t like steak. Steak is the manilest of manly dishes, even though if you eat too much of it it makes you impotent. The ironies of life are what make it interesting, right?

The food comes. The steak tastes like steak cooked in a restaurant: salt, butter, blood with a hint of thyme. The salmon is overcooked and globbed with a sauce of some kind. Salmon, like steak, is the same at every fancy restaurant you go to, without fail. It doesn’t matter the name on the restaurant sign or the price beside the dish, it is always the same.

She takes a bite. Face shrunches. “Oh, my, God. It is so overcooked. It is barely edible.”

There it is. That right there is the reason why an entire day was taken to get ready; why we navigated 20 minutes through traffic, parked, had to ask for bread and butter, and waited another 20 minutes for a beer, and eventually will pay the $250 dinner bill. 

That there is a little ancient Celtic wisdom for you.