New Restaurant: Sea & Smoke

“How are you not morbidly obese?”

For the past 11 years, it’s been my job to write about food. Longer than I expected, especially since my first reaction when told I’d have to edit the dining section of a magazine was, “**** food.” I’d spent the first 20 years of my career writing about music—punk and jazz and experimental bands I often wonder if I championed as a challenge rather than pleasure. I wrote about art, man. I didn’t think of food as art. The food writing I’d read up until that point was flowery, indulgent, comically aristocratic. Microgreens sounded like something people named Perry and Genevieve would discuss around a fire feature in their Aspen timeshare, wearing soft sweaters.

But it was 2007, the American economy was muttering to itself in an alley that smelled like broken homes and Enron’s deplorable musk. I’d lost two-thirds of my freelance income in the span of a week. I needed a job. So I lied and told my prospective editor that I would love to write about what people eat. Having gotten myself in far, far over my head, I studied like mad. I read food dictionaries and cookbooks and Gael Greene and Anthony Bourdain and Calvin Trillin. In my Golden Hill apartment, I huddled every night in a tornado of flashcards and cigarette smoke, and gave myself an ad hoc culinary degree. I ate at restaurants and learned from chefs. I ate at more restaurants. And more. When I wasn’t eating out, I was cooking to learn.

After 4,000-plus days in this profession, I’ve stared down more warm calories than many humans will in an entire lifetime. I eat at anywhere between three and 25 restaurants a week (during special issues, I taste five dishes at five restaurants every day). I’ve shot over 100 episodes of Guy’s Grocery Games on Food Network, and each episode we taste nine dishes. And these dishes are usually not dainty affairs. Though restaurant culture is starting to cook lighter, a great portion of menus are still a tantalizing alchemy of butter, meat, salt, fat, and sugar. Yesterday in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filming Campus Eats for the Big Ten Network, I sampled a chorizo sandwich (pork sausage, coleslaw, guacamole, spicy aioli, shoestring fries, a sunnyside egg, on a brioche bun), four shakes (coconut, passion fruit, espresso, and chocolate), and churros with chocolate sauce.

My Instagram, which is where I document my favorite foods I find in San Diego and across the country, looks like a delicious way to demise. When dining at restaurants, my table looks like a cry for help, as I often sit alone in front of six or seven plates of food. Other diners point and whisper and wonder what terrible life event has crash-landed me at this point. And why I’ve chosen to try and spackle the dent in my soul with pork bellies and sabayons.

Being a food writer is a very lucky, inspiring profession. I’ve been honored to taste food made by some of the most talented, creative chefs and cooks in the country. But it’s also a dangerous job. When former New York Times food critic Frank Bruni retired, he went on a small crusade to warn people that the food writing career is unhealthy, if not deadly. We inhabit bodies, not compost machines.

There is a very real potential for a food writer to become unhealthily obese. Yet, somehow, I’ve so far managed to contain the caloric assault without requiring medical intervention. How? The two-bite rule. Sure, I do the normal things like exercise (I surf, and replaced my dining room table in my tiny Ocean Beach cottage with a treadmill). Every breakfast is an insanely healthy smoothie. Though I’m no gym rat, my position is occasionally plank.

None of my close friends would ever accuse me of excessive restraint. I’ve smoked cigarettes. I’m a friend of the wine and the whiskey. But somehow, I’ve managed to restrain myself from crushing every donut I’ve encountered over the past 11 years because of the two-bite rule. The first is just for sheer pleasure. I don’t overthink it. The second bite is a math problem. I look at the elements on the plate and try to imagine what the chef intended as the perfect bite, and construct it onto a utensil. I close my eyes. I let the bite sit in my mouth for extra seconds, and I start forming opinions and writing its story, good or bad. And then I’m done.

I do everything I possibly can to make sure the food I leave on the plate doesn’t go to waste. Sometimes I’ll take it home and cook with the ingredients. I’ll ask if the kitchen staff will eat the leftovers, and try not to get my dirty fork all over the uneaten portions. If the staff declines, I’ll take it to go and try to find someone on the streets who looks hungry.

I’m not a professional eater. I’m a professional taster, much like wine critics who spit $50 sips of Bordeaux into a bucket. By no means am I thin. My abs took refuge years ago and haven’t been seen since. My underwear modeling prospects were never very bright, but they were doomed the day I took this job.

The two-bite rule has not only extended my lifespan and saved money I’d have to spend on pants, but it’s also taught me a whole new way of eating that I will carry on long after this job is done. It’s taught me how to truly appreciate my food. Buddhists and health professionals talk about mindful eating, and that’s essentially what the two-bite rule is.

When you only have two bites to make an informed impression of a meal, you get off your phone, you stop talking, you eat slow, you tune out as much noise as possible. You focus on that ancient pleasure of tasting food. The temporary tattoo in your memory lasts longer. The pleasure meter goes higher. Raised in a household that admonished “finish what’s on your plate,” I realized that no, thank you, I don’t have to. I can eat until a comfortable satiation, and then take the rest for a later snack.

For much of my life I ate mechanically. The fork was a shovel and my mouth was an efficient, fast machine to break it down. I notice many of my friends still eat this way, and I wish they could experience what I have—the slow, thoughtful, focused enjoyment of tasting food. The two-bite rule has not only saved my mortal coil, but it’s intrinsically altered the way I eat. It’s made it better, and deepened my love affair with what America is cooking.

The Two-Bite Rule

Remember fern bars? They were big in the 1970s. On Three’s Company, Jack Tripper’s friend Larry did most of his sleazing in fern bars. They were dead sexy. The idea was to flip your expectations. You’re inside a 1970s bar. You expect lacquered wood and wet moustaches. Instead, you find a rainforest.

Well, fern bars are back. Only this time they’re called plant wall restaurants. Plant walls are a grand statement piece of interior decor. Almost an entire wall—traditionally hung with a black-and-white photo or some old, rusty thing from Restoration Hardware—is transformed into a living, breathing green space. They’ve started showing up in San Diego restaurants over the last few years at The Pearl, Bankers Hill Bar + Restaurant, and Vin de Syrah. (Technically, Vin de Syrah’s is a fake plant door. But that’s just an ironic, low-maintenance plant wall.)

Most plant walls are made with succulents—humble desert greenery that doesn’t need much water and doesn’t grow too fast (trimming a vertical garden isn’t simple work, nor is tending to its soil).

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

LOUP DE MER: European sea bass with hêrbes de Provence and couscous

LOUP DE MER: European sea bass with hêrbes de Provence and couscous

The two plant walls at The Patio on Goldfinch in Mission Hills are not like that whatsoever. They are how a drag queen might design a plant wall—showy, a touch gaudy, and so, so awesome. Tropical ferns jut out here, red tropical flowers burst over there. The plant walls are thick and wild, like craft beer beards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an entire family of pumas emerge from them or learn that a coffee farmer is stuck in there somewhere. They are two of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a restaurant.

During one meal, a dead leaf falls on one of our plates. The price you must pay for extreme plant walling.

It’s not just the walls. The Patio is one of the most inspiring restaurant spaces in San Diego. Designed by Lahaina Architects, it’s a lovely indoor-outdoor cave with reclaimed slat wood, brass, massive windows with roll-over metal “shutters.” The waiting bench outside is made of driftwood, just like your single dad’s 1978 coffee table. The most compelling part is that “patio.” Really, that’s a misnomer. It’s more a room without a roof—a truly special environment with its own fireplace that takes full advantage of San Diego’s perfect weather. People will fall in love or lust here.

Goldfinch is the second restaurant for the group, under owner Gina Champion Cain and chef John Medall. Their first, in Pacific Beach at the old Lamont Street Grill (renamed The Patio on Lamont), is a huge success. Serving breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, Goldfinch is a pretty enormous undertaking.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Luis :Garcia Luis Garcia

We start with Sunday brunch. The day’s special—a filet mignon hash with a chipotle sauce and a poached egg—is very good, a steak-and-eggs worthy of a bistro in a border town. Also suggested is the bourbon Dutch pancake, stuffed with caramelized bananas and apples, drizzled with berry compôte, agave-maple syrup, and Chantilly cream. The chilaquiles, however, fall a bit flat for a reason I’ll encounter repeatedly over three meals. It’s not that the flavors are off; in fact, they’re reasonably good. It’s just that they all rest in the same warm comfort zone with smoked chicken, cheese, eggs, avocado, tomatillo sauce, and sour cream. It lacks an acidic pop (the tomatillo is very mild)—a bright bite of vegetables (peppers would be great), a pepper-based sauce, or even a smattering of herbs.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

MELT IN YOUR MOUTH: Wild mushroom risotto topped with Boschetto cheese

The Patio has built a glass cheese cave, aging its own with help from top local cheese store Venissimo. Grilled cheese sandwiches made with fancy cheese sound like such a good idea, right? Only, I’m rarely sold that the added level of complexity is worth the extra cash ($13 in this case). When I’ve seen it done well, the bread is treated very lightly—just a silent messenger to deliver the gourmet cheese’s good word. The Patio’s bread is really nicely buttered and caramelized into a state of significant umami. May as well be bulk Cheddar underneath at that point.

At lunch, poke tacos are made with sushi-grade ahi in a soy-sambal marinade, tucked into a fried wanton shell. It’s a creative Mexinese idea. But sambal is Indonesian hot sauce. I’m expecting a compelling punch—and get a polite handshake. The marinade is very light. What you’re left with is quality sushi (and you have a side of very flavorful wasabi), so the consolation prize is no depressing bit of food. Again, it feels timidly played.

There are zero problems with the spaghetti squash with lemon ricotta, sun-dried tomato tapenade, and a chiffonade of basil, tarragon, and parsley. Baked, it gets a nice crispy texture and tastes like a fall farmers market version of angel hair pasta. A watermelon salad (compressed with lime juice and simple syrup) has great flavor development with sweet melon, peppery arugula, smoked feta, and pickled onion and lemon vinaigrette. But whoa, that pine nut brittle. It literally chews like a Now & Later, simultaneously able to crack your teeth and yank them out. The Beef & Bleu flatbread is a parade of deep umami notes (New York steak, gorgonzola, bread, roasted garlic sauce, mushrooms, white truffle oil). It’s nice and rich. But a singular high note (onions, sambal, horseradish) would have set it off perfectly.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Armed with flavor: Octopus with gigante beans, pork belly, and pine-nut butter

Armed with flavor: Octopus with gigante beans, pork belly, and pine-nut butter

At the bar, it’s craft beers (why in San Diego would it be anything else?). The main focus is more than 60 types of tequilas and 14 mescals, plus two kinds of raicilla (Mexican moonshine). Their riff on the mule is house-infused pineapple and vanilla bean blanco tequila with ginger beer that’s carbonated to order. It’s a fantastic drink, not too sweet or too heavy on the ginger. The Mr. Chow is also very good, with gin, Ty Ku soju, cucumber, lime, and a splash of sriracha hot sauce. We try the housemade sangrita, but the spice makes it a challenge, not a pleasure to drink.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Pele Fizz: Bombay Sapphire gin, pomegranate juice, orgeat, and citrus

Medall’s octopus is phenomenal—a huge tentacle perfectly tenderized and well-charred, served over a gigante bean ragout with house-smoked pork belly and pine nut butter. Unless you’re currently avoiding pleasure, try the house-made monkey bread made with vanilla ice cream (yes, ice cream baked in there) and served with mascarpone-honey butter. It’s like eating Prozac-dusted endorphins. This menu is no prescription for weight loss.

A trio of Panko-crusted abalone, however, is just a miss. Shy on seasoning, the main flavor note is Panko. It does come with very good sun-dried tomato mashed potatoes, so we treat the abalone discs like canapés. The loup du mer—a European sea bass stuffed with hêrbes de Provence and served whole over Mediterranean couscous—is beautifully cooked and moist. But, again, it’s faint on flavor. It really could benefit from an aioli or sauce. The short rib with a demi-glace, however, is excellent over whipped parsnips served rustic with nice chunks of parsnips. The wild mushroom risotto has black truffle butter, cheese in the rice, and a thick layer of Boschetto cheese atop. It’s fairly delicious, though closer to fondue than risotto. At this point I start to see a pattern in Medall’s menu. Cheese everywhere. Nut butter in the ragout. Ice cream in the bread. Truffle oils. He’s not shy with life’s most pleasurable flavor enhancers. That’s bound to please a lot of people.

The Patio is a truly special place. Even when I’m grumping on about the lack of acid and greens and herbs in its life, I’d happily do so sitting under that plant wall drinking a mule, eating octopus, and listening for the screams of missing coffee farmers.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Remember fern bars? They were big in the 1970s. On Three’s Company, Jack Tripper’s friend Larry did most of his sleazing in fern bars. They were dead sexy. The idea was to flip your expectations. You’re inside a 1970s bar. You expect lacquered wood and wet moustaches. Instead, you find a rainforest.

Well, fern bars are back. Only this time they’re called plant wall restaurants. Plant walls are a grand statement piece of interior decor. Almost an entire wall—traditionally hung with a black-and-white photo or some old, rusty thing from Restoration Hardware—is transformed into a living, breathing green space. They’ve started showing up in San Diego restaurants over the last few years at The Pearl, Bankers Hill Bar + Restaurant, and Vin de Syrah. (Technically, Vin de Syrah’s is a fake plant door. But that’s just an ironic, low-maintenance plant wall.)

Most plant walls are made with succulents—humble desert greenery that doesn’t need much water and doesn’t grow too fast (trimming a vertical garden isn’t simple work, nor is tending to its soil).

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

LOUP DE MER: European sea bass with hêrbes de Provence and couscous

LOUP DE MER: European sea bass with hêrbes de Provence and couscous

The two plant walls at The Patio on Goldfinch in Mission Hills are not like that whatsoever. They are how a drag queen might design a plant wall—showy, a touch gaudy, and so, so awesome. Tropical ferns jut out here, red tropical flowers burst over there. The plant walls are thick and wild, like craft beer beards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an entire family of pumas emerge from them or learn that a coffee farmer is stuck in there somewhere. They are two of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a restaurant.

During one meal, a dead leaf falls on one of our plates. The price you must pay for extreme plant walling.

It’s not just the walls. The Patio is one of the most inspiring restaurant spaces in San Diego. Designed by Lahaina Architects, it’s a lovely indoor-outdoor cave with reclaimed slat wood, brass, massive windows with roll-over metal “shutters.” The waiting bench outside is made of driftwood, just like your single dad’s 1978 coffee table. The most compelling part is that “patio.” Really, that’s a misnomer. It’s more a room without a roof—a truly special environment with its own fireplace that takes full advantage of San Diego’s perfect weather. People will fall in love or lust here.

Goldfinch is the second restaurant for the group, under owner Gina Champion Cain and chef John Medall. Their first, in Pacific Beach at the old Lamont Street Grill (renamed The Patio on Lamont), is a huge success. Serving breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, Goldfinch is a pretty enormous undertaking.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Luis :Garcia Luis Garcia

We start with Sunday brunch. The day’s special—a filet mignon hash with a chipotle sauce and a poached egg—is very good, a steak-and-eggs worthy of a bistro in a border town. Also suggested is the bourbon Dutch pancake, stuffed with caramelized bananas and apples, drizzled with berry compôte, agave-maple syrup, and Chantilly cream. The chilaquiles, however, fall a bit flat for a reason I’ll encounter repeatedly over three meals. It’s not that the flavors are off; in fact, they’re reasonably good. It’s just that they all rest in the same warm comfort zone with smoked chicken, cheese, eggs, avocado, tomatillo sauce, and sour cream. It lacks an acidic pop (the tomatillo is very mild)—a bright bite of vegetables (peppers would be great), a pepper-based sauce, or even a smattering of herbs.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

MELT IN YOUR MOUTH: Wild mushroom risotto topped with Boschetto cheese

The Patio has built a glass cheese cave, aging its own with help from top local cheese store Venissimo. Grilled cheese sandwiches made with fancy cheese sound like such a good idea, right? Only, I’m rarely sold that the added level of complexity is worth the extra cash ($13 in this case). When I’ve seen it done well, the bread is treated very lightly—just a silent messenger to deliver the gourmet cheese’s good word. The Patio’s bread is really nicely buttered and caramelized into a state of significant umami. May as well be bulk Cheddar underneath at that point.

At lunch, poke tacos are made with sushi-grade ahi in a soy-sambal marinade, tucked into a fried wanton shell. It’s a creative Mexinese idea. But sambal is Indonesian hot sauce. I’m expecting a compelling punch—and get a polite handshake. The marinade is very light. What you’re left with is quality sushi (and you have a side of very flavorful wasabi), so the consolation prize is no depressing bit of food. Again, it feels timidly played.

There are zero problems with the spaghetti squash with lemon ricotta, sun-dried tomato tapenade, and a chiffonade of basil, tarragon, and parsley. Baked, it gets a nice crispy texture and tastes like a fall farmers market version of angel hair pasta. A watermelon salad (compressed with lime juice and simple syrup) has great flavor development with sweet melon, peppery arugula, smoked feta, and pickled onion and lemon vinaigrette. But whoa, that pine nut brittle. It literally chews like a Now & Later, simultaneously able to crack your teeth and yank them out. The Beef & Bleu flatbread is a parade of deep umami notes (New York steak, gorgonzola, bread, roasted garlic sauce, mushrooms, white truffle oil). It’s nice and rich. But a singular high note (onions, sambal, horseradish) would have set it off perfectly.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Armed with flavor: Octopus with gigante beans, pork belly, and pine-nut butter

Armed with flavor: Octopus with gigante beans, pork belly, and pine-nut butter

At the bar, it’s craft beers (why in San Diego would it be anything else?). The main focus is more than 60 types of tequilas and 14 mescals, plus two kinds of raicilla (Mexican moonshine). Their riff on the mule is house-infused pineapple and vanilla bean blanco tequila with ginger beer that’s carbonated to order. It’s a fantastic drink, not too sweet or too heavy on the ginger. The Mr. Chow is also very good, with gin, Ty Ku soju, cucumber, lime, and a splash of sriracha hot sauce. We try the housemade sangrita, but the spice makes it a challenge, not a pleasure to drink.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

Pele Fizz: Bombay Sapphire gin, pomegranate juice, orgeat, and citrus

Medall’s octopus is phenomenal—a huge tentacle perfectly tenderized and well-charred, served over a gigante bean ragout with house-smoked pork belly and pine nut butter. Unless you’re currently avoiding pleasure, try the house-made monkey bread made with vanilla ice cream (yes, ice cream baked in there) and served with mascarpone-honey butter. It’s like eating Prozac-dusted endorphins. This menu is no prescription for weight loss.

A trio of Panko-crusted abalone, however, is just a miss. Shy on seasoning, the main flavor note is Panko. It does come with very good sun-dried tomato mashed potatoes, so we treat the abalone discs like canapés. The loup du mer—a European sea bass stuffed with hêrbes de Provence and served whole over Mediterranean couscous—is beautifully cooked and moist. But, again, it’s faint on flavor. It really could benefit from an aioli or sauce. The short rib with a demi-glace, however, is excellent over whipped parsnips served rustic with nice chunks of parsnips. The wild mushroom risotto has black truffle butter, cheese in the rice, and a thick layer of Boschetto cheese atop. It’s fairly delicious, though closer to fondue than risotto. At this point I start to see a pattern in Medall’s menu. Cheese everywhere. Nut butter in the ragout. Ice cream in the bread. Truffle oils. He’s not shy with life’s most pleasurable flavor enhancers. That’s bound to please a lot of people.

The Patio is a truly special place. Even when I’m grumping on about the lack of acid and greens and herbs in its life, I’d happily do so sitting under that plant wall drinking a mule, eating octopus, and listening for the screams of missing coffee farmers.

Restaurant Review: The Patio on Goldfinch

A few years ago, I was invited to a designer sushi spot in a wealthy part of San Diego along the coast for an omakase, which essentially means “chef’s choice” in Japanese.

There were no windows in this sushi den. It was all mood lighting, designed to hide the harsh reality that aging really makes us humans look like old cauliflower. Since very few 20-somethings can afford to live in the surrounding neighborhood, the restaurant is frequented by middle-aged women and their retrofitted curvy parts. It’s a crowd full of half-tipsy, half-married people. The employees, however, are all 20-somethings produced from the super-loins of supermodels. They have composure, and appear to be excellent service professionals. But their main purpose is to serve as balls of yarn for the cougar clientele to bat around with their eyes.

The thought of omakase was a little intimidating. As a food writer, chefs seem to think we’ve gone deep into the Vietnamese jungle to find the stream that supplied the world’s first bowl of pho. That we’ve dined on caviar-bedazzled oselots and monkey brains sporting toupées of foie gras. I’m sure that’s a square meal for Anthony Bourdain. But most of us just run around town eating burgers for yet another Top 10 list.

Still, chefs don’t bother giving food writers the prime rib or fries. We’re more likely to get a sous vide cow snout, each nostril filled with deep-fried chicken ovaries.

My friend and I sit at the sushi bar. The only thing between us and the itamae is a glass case of raw seafood. Red fish, yellow fish, orange fish, white fish, purple fish. It reminds me of Amsterdam’s Red Light District—a collection of flesh behind glass, some beautiful, some more suited for fetish.

The chef starts us with gigantic sushi rolls called futomaki. Easy enough. Huge sushi rolls are custom made for Americans. In America, people are less concerned with quality than they are girth. We prefer our food share attributes with top-shelf porn penis.

About halfway through the meal as sake massages our bloodstreams, we notice the chef start to build a really elaborate plate. Garnishes everywhere. Most sushi is served minimally, echoing its origins as Japanese street food. But what he’s designing looks like an Indian wedding or the lobby of a Waikiki Marriott.

He then walks over to the aquarium, which I had thought to be a sadistic interior décor choice—like having cows grazing in the corner of a burger restaurant. He unfolds a step stool, climbs up and grabs a net. He dips it into the water.

The fish look a little concerned. Pick up their pace a bit. But for the most part they keep their composure. Humans wouldn’t be nearly as calm or collected if every few hours, the large hand of god just reached down and scoops up a Volvo full of us. That would make us twitchy.

The chef eventually corners a red rockfish and pulls it out in the net. It doesn’t really struggle. I’m not sure if this is because it’s in shock, or maybe the fish is self-aware. Maybe he realizes he’s a fish, and this is how his fish life goes. It just lays there, a muscular comma in a hammock.

My buddy elbows me and asks me what I think the chef is gonna do with it.

I have no idea. I’m thinking he might ceremoniously present the fish to us, then an apprentice will hurry it back into the kitchen and cook it. I’m not sure why I think they’ll cook it in a sushi restaurant. Eating it raw just doesn’t seem like a very polite option. I mean, unless you find yourself starving in the wilderness, shouldn’t there be a mandatory waiting period between killing an animal and eating it?

I realize I am uncomfortably close to my food’s impending death.

My father didn’t fish. Sure we dangled a few strings over a pier on the resort island of Catalina. But the only fish we caught was a Garibaldi. It was protected by the state because it was orange and adorable. The one we caught seemed fairly cocky about this fact. Just threw itself on the hook to mock us. But no Johnson had ever actually gutted anything, unless you count the time we remodeled the kitchen.

My entire life, the carnivorous process has been comfortably removed from my view. I never saw the slaughter, butchering, transport or packaging. Meat was just a glistening whoopee cushion of flesh under a sheet of cellophane at the grocery store.

And this rockfish… well, it seemed to deserve a little due process. It was a local celebrity. It was an essential part of the interior design. A mascot. Twenty minutes ago, the child of a well-martini’d cougar had been marveling at this fish, joy in his little cougar-child face.

The chef holds the fish tightly in one hand. He’s got a grim, nervous look. That’s when I realize—oh, no. He presses the fish, now struggling a little bit, down onto the cutting board. Then he quickly shanks him in the back of the neck. No other way to say it. When the fish is still alive, it’s not a “knife cut.” It’s a shanking. Same thing that happens when you take the last baked potato in the jail cafeteria.

What happens next is even creepier. He carefully inserts the knife into the fish’s side, and starts to cut.

Oh, jesus.

I’m immediately emotionally scarred. Not a minor, comical scarred. But “Mom, there’s something in Santa’s pants” scarred.

The chef begins to work his knife down the length of the fish. His hands are shaking a little bit. It’s brutal to watch. You see, I’m an animal-loving carnivore. Growing up, I was the weird boy who knocked on our elderly neighbor’s door to ask if I could pet her poodle. I realize our food animals aren’t Thai-massaged until they die of extreme pleasure. I’ve always blindly hoped animals were killed quickly and efficiently.

There is nothing quick about this.

The chef begins to make a series of careful, exacting cuts into the side of the fish’s body. And then—oh Jesus that isn’t…—yes it is. A piece of sashimi dislodges and falls onto the cutting board. The chef cuts a little more. Another piece falls. More cutting, another piece.

The chef carefully places the rockfish down on the plate. He presents it to us without saying a word, and backs away. He’s real solemn about it. Sad. Reverent.

I look down. Half of this fish’s body is still intact. The other half is now perfect pieces of sushi, propped up against the flap of skin where all these pieces of sushi had just been dislodged.

The fish is still alive.

(Note: I’ve since been told that fish move their mouths for a few minutes after they’re dead. So it might have been dead. But at the time, I’m convinced it’s alive. That’s all that matters.)

My friend and I don’t look at each other for a few long seconds. We don’t want to see the horror on each other’s face. Plus, what if the insanity of the situation makes one of us let out a confused chuckle? I’m always afraid at weddings that I’ll just stand up and scream curse words.

I stare at the fish. It stares back. It’s still gasping. My instinct is to take my beer glass and hit it over the head. Finish the job. Or I could just refuse the dish, saying thank you chef but no thank you, serial killer ***hole.

But the chef had shown nothing but reverence. He didn’t fist bump a coworker. It didn’t seem to be a bad fraternity prank, or like flexing in the mirror at the top of the food chain. What if this is a centuries-old Japanese ritual I just don’t know about? Whatever it is, I’m out of my league.

All I can think about the documentary film The Cove. It’s about an area of Japan where dolphins are lured into a bay, harpooned, and used for food. Every American I knew was outraged by the film. What I saw was a bunch of white people who don’t eat dolphins went over to a country where they do eat dolphins. I was wholly unsurprised that the white people were mortified and cried. Frankly, it seemed a little sanctimonious. Just because I love dogs doesn’t mean I’m going to shame someone from a completely different culture for slow-cooking a Chihuahua at 275 degrees. America loves its tasty burger, which freaks Hindus out.

I make a mental note to Google “rock fish tolerance for pain” or “ability to grasp torture” when I get home. Even if I would forever refuse this sort of experience again in my life, I decide to go with it. I am a houseguest, I reason. I’ve been presented a pretty grisly welcome gift. And I’m going to accept it, experience it, see and feel everything it has to teach me.

On instinct, I clasp my hands together, make a minor, awkward head bow toward the fish, and say, “Thank you.”

As a child, I had been taught to say grace before meals. But I’m lucky to have grown up in an environment where eating was a daily, commonplace thing. To be thankful for it seemed like being thankful for air or fingernails.

But this was the first time in my life I’ve ever on a deep, emotional level truly felt grace—a whole-body, overwhelming sense of gratitude.

The fish is… still… alive.

Die, man, die.

It’s not only alive, but it seems to be staring at me. As if to express, Really, guy? You’re going to eat half of me while I fade to black? You’re a real son of a bitch, aren’t ya?

I stick the first piece of sashimi in my mouth. It’s remarkably wet—almost juicy like citrus. The flavors are brilliantly sharp. It’s as if I can literally taste residual electricity that made the muscles twitch and swim. The meat is crunchy, not having gone through rigor mortis needed to become silky smooth.

Between the first and the second bites, the rockfish takes its last gasp. I’m looking into its eyes when this happened. The taste of its own flesh is in my mouth. The sushi chef stands nearby, still quiet. His hands are still shaking. No one would get out of this experience without a little twitch.

Since that night, I’ve talked with sushi chefs about the experience. It’s called izikuri, a Japanese tradition dating back thousands of years. Most cultures aren’t as attached to or squeamish about food animals as Americans. The allure of izikuri is ultimate freshness, and I’m sure a little bit of alpha-species spectacle. It seems even the revered ancient Japanese cultures had a frat boy element. During izikuri, mere seconds pass between death and eating. Or, in cases like ours, they overlap.

There is a point where you’re willing to bend your own ethics out of respect for a cultural tradition. It’s called being a good guest. I never want dinner fed live to me again. But whether it’s an honorable tradition or cruel torture—it changed me on a deep, cellular level. As a carnivore, I was forced to watch what must happen in order for me to eat meat. I actively closed the circle of life. This wasn’t an abstract documentary. This wasn’t a PBS special. This was my dinner. I’ve never been so humbled.

My friend and I ate the rest of the sushi. When done, the chef removed the other half of the rockfish, sent it to the back, and it and returned it roasted whole. We felt it our duty not to waste one bit of the life-sustaining protein we’ve just helped kill. We eat the cheeks, the eyeballs, the bits.

We get drunk. Dead drunk.

Ideally, I wouldn’t have to eat an animal as it dies to learn this lesson. Ideally, I could intellectually fill in the gaps. But you can intellectualize skydiving, and then you can jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet and feel the adrenaline rip through your insides like desert lightning.

That meal is tattooed on my memory. I think about it nearly every time I eat.

I’m still a carnivore. If I become a better person or if all of my taste buds die in a fire, I might become vegetarian. But I have tried to waste as little meat as someone in my profession can. But once I saw life become food on my plate, I wasted even less.

From that day forward I’ve said grace at every meal. That rockfish altered me for good.

It took the anonymity out of the carnivore process. It reconnected my emotions into my food. I don’t like to think—I know—I’m a better human for it.

Look Your Food in the Eye

A few years ago, I was invited to a designer sushi spot in a wealthy part of San Diego along the coast for an omakase, which essentially means “chef’s choice” in Japanese.

There were no windows in this sushi den. It was all mood lighting, designed to hide the harsh reality that aging really makes us humans look like old cauliflower. Since very few 20-somethings can afford to live in the surrounding neighborhood, the restaurant is frequented by middle-aged women and their retrofitted curvy parts. It’s a crowd full of half-tipsy, half-married people. The employees, however, are all 20-somethings produced from the super-loins of supermodels. They have composure, and appear to be excellent service professionals. But their main purpose is to serve as balls of yarn for the cougar clientele to bat around with their eyes.

The thought of omakase was a little intimidating. As a food writer, chefs seem to think we’ve gone deep into the Vietnamese jungle to find the stream that supplied the world’s first bowl of pho. That we’ve dined on caviar-bedazzled oselots and monkey brains sporting toupées of foie gras. I’m sure that’s a square meal for Anthony Bourdain. But most of us just run around town eating burgers for yet another Top 10 list.

Still, chefs don’t bother giving food writers the prime rib or fries. We’re more likely to get a sous vide cow snout, each nostril filled with deep-fried chicken ovaries.

My friend and I sit at the sushi bar. The only thing between us and the itamae is a glass case of raw seafood. Red fish, yellow fish, orange fish, white fish, purple fish. It reminds me of Amsterdam’s Red Light District—a collection of flesh behind glass, some beautiful, some more suited for fetish.

The chef starts us with gigantic sushi rolls called futomaki. Easy enough. Huge sushi rolls are custom made for Americans. In America, people are less concerned with quality than they are girth. We prefer our food share attributes with top-shelf porn penis.

About halfway through the meal as sake massages our bloodstreams, we notice the chef start to build a really elaborate plate. Garnishes everywhere. Most sushi is served minimally, echoing its origins as Japanese street food. But what he’s designing looks like an Indian wedding or the lobby of a Waikiki Marriott.

He then walks over to the aquarium, which I had thought to be a sadistic interior décor choice—like having cows grazing in the corner of a burger restaurant. He unfolds a step stool, climbs up and grabs a net. He dips it into the water.

The fish look a little concerned. Pick up their pace a bit. But for the most part they keep their composure. Humans wouldn’t be nearly as calm or collected if every few hours, the large hand of god just reached down and scoops up a Volvo full of us. That would make us twitchy.

The chef eventually corners a red rockfish and pulls it out in the net. It doesn’t really struggle. I’m not sure if this is because it’s in shock, or maybe the fish is self-aware. Maybe he realizes he’s a fish, and this is how his fish life goes. It just lays there, a muscular comma in a hammock.

My buddy elbows me and asks me what I think the chef is gonna do with it.

I have no idea. I’m thinking he might ceremoniously present the fish to us, then an apprentice will hurry it back into the kitchen and cook it. I’m not sure why I think they’ll cook it in a sushi restaurant. Eating it raw just doesn’t seem like a very polite option. I mean, unless you find yourself starving in the wilderness, shouldn’t there be a mandatory waiting period between killing an animal and eating it?

I realize I am uncomfortably close to my food’s impending death.

My father didn’t fish. Sure we dangled a few strings over a pier on the resort island of Catalina. But the only fish we caught was a Garibaldi. It was protected by the state because it was orange and adorable. The one we caught seemed fairly cocky about this fact. Just threw itself on the hook to mock us. But no Johnson had ever actually gutted anything, unless you count the time we remodeled the kitchen.

My entire life, the carnivorous process has been comfortably removed from my view. I never saw the slaughter, butchering, transport or packaging. Meat was just a glistening whoopee cushion of flesh under a sheet of cellophane at the grocery store.

And this rockfish… well, it seemed to deserve a little due process. It was a local celebrity. It was an essential part of the interior design. A mascot. Twenty minutes ago, the child of a well-martini’d cougar had been marveling at this fish, joy in his little cougar-child face.

The chef holds the fish tightly in one hand. He’s got a grim, nervous look. That’s when I realize—oh, no. He presses the fish, now struggling a little bit, down onto the cutting board. Then he quickly shanks him in the back of the neck. No other way to say it. When the fish is still alive, it’s not a “knife cut.” It’s a shanking. Same thing that happens when you take the last baked potato in the jail cafeteria.

What happens next is even creepier. He carefully inserts the knife into the fish’s side, and starts to cut.

Oh, jesus.

I’m immediately emotionally scarred. Not a minor, comical scarred. But “Mom, there’s something in Santa’s pants” scarred.

The chef begins to work his knife down the length of the fish. His hands are shaking a little bit. It’s brutal to watch. You see, I’m an animal-loving carnivore. Growing up, I was the weird boy who knocked on our elderly neighbor’s door to ask if I could pet her poodle. I realize our food animals aren’t Thai-massaged until they die of extreme pleasure. I’ve always blindly hoped animals were killed quickly and efficiently.

There is nothing quick about this.

The chef begins to make a series of careful, exacting cuts into the side of the fish’s body. And then—oh Jesus that isn’t…—yes it is. A piece of sashimi dislodges and falls onto the cutting board. The chef cuts a little more. Another piece falls. More cutting, another piece.

The chef carefully places the rockfish down on the plate. He presents it to us without saying a word, and backs away. He’s real solemn about it. Sad. Reverent.

I look down. Half of this fish’s body is still intact. The other half is now perfect pieces of sushi, propped up against the flap of skin where all these pieces of sushi had just been dislodged.

The fish is still alive.

(Note: I’ve since been told that fish move their mouths for a few minutes after they’re dead. So it might have been dead. But at the time, I’m convinced it’s alive. That’s all that matters.)

My friend and I don’t look at each other for a few long seconds. We don’t want to see the horror on each other’s face. Plus, what if the insanity of the situation makes one of us let out a confused chuckle? I’m always afraid at weddings that I’ll just stand up and scream curse words.

I stare at the fish. It stares back. It’s still gasping. My instinct is to take my beer glass and hit it over the head. Finish the job. Or I could just refuse the dish, saying thank you chef but no thank you, serial killer ***hole.

But the chef had shown nothing but reverence. He didn’t fist bump a coworker. It didn’t seem to be a bad fraternity prank, or like flexing in the mirror at the top of the food chain. What if this is a centuries-old Japanese ritual I just don’t know about? Whatever it is, I’m out of my league.

All I can think about the documentary film The Cove. It’s about an area of Japan where dolphins are lured into a bay, harpooned, and used for food. Every American I knew was outraged by the film. What I saw was a bunch of white people who don’t eat dolphins went over to a country where they do eat dolphins. I was wholly unsurprised that the white people were mortified and cried. Frankly, it seemed a little sanctimonious. Just because I love dogs doesn’t mean I’m going to shame someone from a completely different culture for slow-cooking a Chihuahua at 275 degrees. America loves its tasty burger, which freaks Hindus out.

I make a mental note to Google “rock fish tolerance for pain” or “ability to grasp torture” when I get home. Even if I would forever refuse this sort of experience again in my life, I decide to go with it. I am a houseguest, I reason. I’ve been presented a pretty grisly welcome gift. And I’m going to accept it, experience it, see and feel everything it has to teach me.

On instinct, I clasp my hands together, make a minor, awkward head bow toward the fish, and say, “Thank you.”

As a child, I had been taught to say grace before meals. But I’m lucky to have grown up in an environment where eating was a daily, commonplace thing. To be thankful for it seemed like being thankful for air or fingernails.

But this was the first time in my life I’ve ever on a deep, emotional level truly felt grace—a whole-body, overwhelming sense of gratitude.

The fish is… still… alive.

Die, man, die.

It’s not only alive, but it seems to be staring at me. As if to express, Really, guy? You’re going to eat half of me while I fade to black? You’re a real son of a bitch, aren’t ya?

I stick the first piece of sashimi in my mouth. It’s remarkably wet—almost juicy like citrus. The flavors are brilliantly sharp. It’s as if I can literally taste residual electricity that made the muscles twitch and swim. The meat is crunchy, not having gone through rigor mortis needed to become silky smooth.

Between the first and the second bites, the rockfish takes its last gasp. I’m looking into its eyes when this happened. The taste of its own flesh is in my mouth. The sushi chef stands nearby, still quiet. His hands are still shaking. No one would get out of this experience without a little twitch.

Since that night, I’ve talked with sushi chefs about the experience. It’s called izikuri, a Japanese tradition dating back thousands of years. Most cultures aren’t as attached to or squeamish about food animals as Americans. The allure of izikuri is ultimate freshness, and I’m sure a little bit of alpha-species spectacle. It seems even the revered ancient Japanese cultures had a frat boy element. During izikuri, mere seconds pass between death and eating. Or, in cases like ours, they overlap.

There is a point where you’re willing to bend your own ethics out of respect for a cultural tradition. It’s called being a good guest. I never want dinner fed live to me again. But whether it’s an honorable tradition or cruel torture—it changed me on a deep, cellular level. As a carnivore, I was forced to watch what must happen in order for me to eat meat. I actively closed the circle of life. This wasn’t an abstract documentary. This wasn’t a PBS special. This was my dinner. I’ve never been so humbled.

My friend and I ate the rest of the sushi. When done, the chef removed the other half of the rockfish, sent it to the back, and it and returned it roasted whole. We felt it our duty not to waste one bit of the life-sustaining protein we’ve just helped kill. We eat the cheeks, the eyeballs, the bits.

We get drunk. Dead drunk.

Ideally, I wouldn’t have to eat an animal as it dies to learn this lesson. Ideally, I could intellectually fill in the gaps. But you can intellectualize skydiving, and then you can jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet and feel the adrenaline rip through your insides like desert lightning.

That meal is tattooed on my memory. I think about it nearly every time I eat.

I’m still a carnivore. If I become a better person or if all of my taste buds die in a fire, I might become vegetarian. But I have tried to waste as little meat as someone in my profession can. But once I saw life become food on my plate, I wasted even less.

From that day forward I’ve said grace at every meal. That rockfish altered me for good.

It took the anonymity out of the carnivore process. It reconnected my emotions into my food. I don’t like to think—I know—I’m a better human for it.

Look Your Food in the Eye