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Gathering Place
 Arnold Van Fossen |
Let them just lie there
in anticipation of a saltI want them naked. I want them to just lie there, quietly waiting for my choice of lighting, music and sauces. I will orally abuse them at my leisure.
I am discussing shellfish.
Shrimp look funny in their semi-transparent armor skins, and their delicate little feet fall off and get stuck between my teeth. I don't want to sit in a restaurant and disembowel a shrimp, a lobster or, heaven forbid, a king crab.
Inevitably, when the mood strikes and someone else is footing the bill, I am overdressed or wearing a new aloha shirt and should not be putting on some silly paper bib and trying to handle a slippery, stainless steel nutcracker. It is for nuts, not crabs. And no matter who is paying for dinner, I don't want the option of cracking a crab or peeling some shrimp or having to pull the meat out of the lobster's spiny tail a half-inch away from its butt.
It is quite a personal thing, as I find nothing bonding about sitting at a table of lobster eaters and tying a paper adornment around my neck, meant to protect my clothing. I am far too sloppy and the bibs far too small. Besides, I am there for the meat.
I learned a wonderful trick at the restaurants I worked at in college. It was called "French Service." Whether or not they actually do this in France is of little consequence. Heck, other than the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, there is nothing I want to take out of France, although they do raise a passable passel of truffles.
What occurs during French Service is the removal of the meat from the lobster's tail. The meat is immediately replaced into the tail shell for service and eating, but the customer needs do little more than cut off a non-choking-size piece and enjoy.
Shrimp require a bit more care. You have to parboil them -- with or without their wee little heads -- then quickly dunk them into ice water and then rip off the head, shell and little blue vein (some call it the alimentary canal) in one fell swoop. They are small and dead so this abuse of their bodies is not offensive to them. And it makes them presentable, whether dangling over a cut glass bowl filled with lettuce and red sauce or floating gaily in a sauce of white wine, butter and spices on a bed of egg noodles. They require no table effort except for forking them into your mouth. So why would you risk third-degree burns to pull a shrimp out of a hot bed of linguini to skin it?
A crab -- whether a king, a queen or a herd of miniatures normally found under rocks in a stream bed -- is a struggle to deal with at the table. They do look impressive lying there with red legs doubled under their bodies, looking as if they are about to spring for your jugular. At best, when someone takes a sledgehammer to the body and cracks the shell, it looks as if you have just come upon a roadside accident. I may slow down and glance at the accident, but I don't want to stop and nibble upon the contents.
The restaurant may be providing ambience for the tourist and the uninitiated, but the rest of us are in it for the naked meat. With or without hot butter, the flesh of the shrimp, lobster and crab should be naked and orally abused with gusto. Noisy chewing is quite acceptable.
Should someone want to keep score, the kitchen can provide a plate of shells to place on an unobtrusive corner of the table near the diner's bottle of beer. For those who demand a king crab or lobster on the table, a wonderful factory in Japan specializes in making food-like things out of plastic. These don't rot, and you need only vacuum them once a week or so, or perhaps take them into the shower when you bathe.
Otherwise, as that wonderful chef, bottle washer and magnificent specimen of a woman would say, "Bon appetit."
And yes, while Julia Child is the best thing ever to come out of France, I believe she was kidnapped from elsewhere by hungry French pirates and taken there as a child. Vive la Child.
I may want her naked and lying about after dinner.
Arnold Van Fossen is an artist who lives in Waikiki.