Salmon at a Restaurant

Lucian Freud, Fish Head (1944)

There’s so many dishes in my mind that are almost impossible to recreate again. They’re not particularly fancy, haute-cuisine or complicated, but it’s with a heavy sadness that they can never be had again. I can never go back to that one perfect moment when I first tried it, the first bite, how my mind felt like it was learning something new, how excited I was for the next mouthful. 

That frustration, the impossibility, is something I feel whenever I cook salmon. I’m never happy with it, because it’ll never be like the salmon I had aged 11 at The Falcon. 

It’s not a restaurant, to be clear, it’s a pub with a bright conservatory that felt like a ‘restaurant’. But for an 11 year old, where going to the village along from where you lived meant you had to get in a car for a meal, it was the epitome of elegant grown-up cooking. 

I’d always, without fail (except just once, when I had fish and chips, which definitely resulted in sulking for the rest of the meal), order the pan-fried salmon, served with chunky chips and green beans (glossy with butter). That salmon, seasoned and crispy, was to this day one of my most heady food memories. 

It was just a pan-fried fillet, but I think it must’ve been the first time I had crispy salmon skin. That oiled crunch, silky fattiness coating my mouth, cut through with salt crystals and pepper. I remember vividly how crispy that skin was, and how each side of the salmon had been seared so the edge of each flake was burnished chocolate brown. How it the flakes melted when you pushed against it with a fork revealing the vibrantly blushed slippery inside.

I felt so grown up, eating salmon skin! A thing most fussy 11 year olds blanch at. And actually enjoying it! (Note, I was eating it with chips which meant I had a little pot of ketchup, and yes, I had the salmon with ketchup. So does it count? Who cares!) 

When I cook salmon, 19 years later, I still hold it up against to the salmon I had then. The ultimate benchmark. It pales in comparison: it’s not as crispy, it’s a bit overcooked, it’s under-seasoned, or worse of all, with white-hot panic… the skin’s stuck to the pan. 

But at least I’ve had it. That one perfect moment, forever intangible and just out of grasp. Maybe I should get out the ketchup…