Nobody likes salmon. Salmon is the food enjoyed by passive-aggressive people the world over. "I'll go out to eat with you, but I refuse to have fun." You eat your burger; I'll get the salmon, down here on the bottom of the menu. It was your idea to eat here. Enjoy your pork chop, but I refuse to give you the pleasure of watching me have fun.
Even the name comes with that built-in sneer. It's "sa." I'm going to have the saaaa... The sneer ends with the "em" and the "en" together, so you have to close your mouth. M and N: two sounds that require a closed mouth back-to-back just to get the message.
It looks like it might be a fun word to say when you see it down there with the salads and the half-portion options. It's that "l" in the word, right in the center: S-A-L-M-O-N. Salmon. You don't get to say the "l." L for love. L is for lust, laughs, life. In salmon, all that is silent.
You're an even worse person if you buy salmon in a store. Are you going to buy farm-raised salmon or wild-caught salmon? I know one makes you a better person than someone who buys the other, but I refuse to look it up and find out which is which. If you know, you know, and you’re probably a lousy dinner companion.
That white, purulent goo, by the way — the gross stuff everyone pretends isn't on the fish they just served you and that you have to scrape off just to choke it down — is called albumin. So there you go. If you want to sound like an erudite picky eater, now you finally get to say a fun word with a hard "l": albumin. You can remember it because it sounds like, "I'll be spewin'."
Anyway, bon appétit.
I'm Dan Libman, a name with an "em" and "en," but a very present "L": Libman. And that's my perspective.
Copy Edited by Eryn Lent
