Smoked salmon

Berkeley, California, September 14, 2009—

I'M SUPPOSED TO EAT fish; we're all supposed to eat fish. It's good for us. So at a restaurant new to me, where the menu didn't really inspire me particularly, I ordered the smoked salmon for a first course, partly out of dutifulness, partly to counteract a bad experience with smoked salmon a couple of weeks ago, when not I but a friend became sick after eating it. Yes, I believe in magic like this: a bad experience can be laid to rest by somehow bookending it.
The reason the menu didn't inspire me was that this was one of those places that seemed to put one ingredient too many on every item on the list. Take the salmon, for example: it was served in slices piled on a small potato cake; horseradish cream on the side; slivers of raw apple piled on top, like the Pick-Up-Sticks we used to play with seventy years ago.
After the salmon, ravioli filled with ricotta and drizzled with a tarragon-flavored cream sauce. They weren't bad, not bad at all.

Riesling, "Paraiso" (Monterey County), 2007

Five, 2086 Allston Way, Berkeley, California; tel. 510-845-7300