Pickled Herring Feelings
On my first trip to London, I went to a gastropub known for its avant-garde cuisine. I was traveling with my mom who is not an adventurous eater, but I was determined to find the best food in the burgeoning food scene in central London.
At this gastropub, the atmosphere was cozy, but all I remember is that we were seated in this strange alcove off to the side, like a private dining area, which was the opposite of what I wanted as a 22-year-old traveler on her first night in London, at a fancy restaurant she had researched on ChowHound.com and who was not paying the bill. I ordered a fish dish because I imagined the seafaring English knew how to cook fish, and while I had probably not eaten more pescatarian fare than a tunafish sandwich at that point in my life, I wanted to seem cosmopolitan and refined, and a fish I’d never heard of before seemed the way to go.
When it arrived, it was a plate of cold pickled herring sprinkled with dill.
I love dill, but nothing was going to entice me to eat this plate of cold, salty, pickled herring from the North Sea. I felt like a fool. I couldn’t even pretend to eat it. As I am an inveterate optimist, I probably took one, maybe two bites. When the waiter returned, I was deeply embarrassed by my terrible choice in ordering and even more embarrassed that I had made absolutely no progress. He offered to bring me something else, but I was so full of shame that I demurred and went hungry.
Right now, my life feels like that plate of pickled herring.
I want to say “this is not what I ordered” but the truth is, this is exactly what I ordered.
Ever since I went to graduate school in my mid-twenties to study education, I had been planning on a career as a community college English professor: teaching composition and literature classes, spending my summers working on curriculum revisions while squeezing in travel and my own creative writing projects. I even went back to graduate school in my late twenties when I needed another degree to secure a tenure-track position.
I’m now a tenured professor, working at a community college near San Francisco, a place where I imagined throughout most of my twenties I would “settle down,” build a community, find a life partner, have a family, maybe even enter the gauntlet of the Bay Area real estate market. No small feat, indeed. I ordered up this life just like I ordered the pickled herring: completely unaware of what I was getting myself into, and too ashamed to admit that it wasn’t what I wanted. That is wasn’t to my taste.
On that first trip to London, I had a vision that all my research on the ChowHound forums would make me look like I knew my way around London’s culinary map, finding hidden gems and impressing everyone with my sophisticated taste. I held on to that vision throughout the entire trip, steadfastly refusing to admit that I didn’t like cold, Scandinavian specialities or slightly too garlicky pasta or curried lamb shanks that were beyond my threshold for spiciness.
It’s been almost fifteen years since that first trip to London, and I had many good meals in the Big Smoke since that visit.
I’m older and hopefully, a bit wiser. Even though this is what I ordered, I think I’m finally able to say to the waiter: Thanks, but this isn't for me.
Can I take another look at the menu?