Sunday, February 11, 2007

Fishy


The postings on this blog have never the intention to be controversial although sometimes for specific loyal and fervent readers they are.
Today all the authority available is needed to justify the following statement and to avoid any friction when it is stated that the best food in the world is found in two countries only.
The world has been travelled many times over 36 years and everywhere food has been tested therefore we must consider this opinion as one from an expert.
The conclusion is that the very best food is found in France and Japan.
There we are. Now the comments and e-mails to this posting can be contributed.
It is of course a personal opinion but the strong point is that it is based after visiting and eating in countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, South America and even in the USA.
A person having had the opportunity to travel and eat as extensively will undeniably come to the same conclusion: France and Japan. That’s where the food is cooked and tastes the best.
Now some of us may say that the local hamburger from Wendy’s is juicy and delicious as well. This is true. But this opinion demonstrates how far away one has been eaten. A few more miles and that hamburger turns out to be inferior.

Experts know that the quality of the food is mostly a matter of what is served on the plate but we should not forget that the ambience is highly responsible as well for a good tasting experience.
Both in France and in Japan, besides the food, the atmosphere and ambience in a good restaurant is highly impressing and influential as well.
In Japan very often the cooks are working in front of the guests near the entrance door. It is an attractive melee of sounds because the cooks and waitresses wishing a warm welcome greet anyone coming in with a choir of loud voices.
Behind the cooks preparing the food is usually an aquarium in which the fish are swimming eventually destined to end their lives on the plates of the guests of the restaurant.
Last night in a restaurant one cook took a net on a stick, caught a large fish from the aquarium and got it out. The animal was fighting for its life making noises by flipping its fins and tail on the wooden board deafening the other sounds in the restaurant. But some good chops of the cook’s knife had another fish’s soul go to heaven and fresh fish-meat on some plates.
While observer was eating fish himself this was a rather weird spectacle to see. It brought the thought and conclusion to mind that animals do not like to die. Even not fish. And the reflection if those fish in the aquarium seeing the sushi and sashimi being prepared, had any clue that this was what they themselves were eventually awaiting.
Scientists have recently discovered that only elephants and dolphins can see themselves in a mirror. They know it is them. There is this shocking footage of an elephant in a zoo and they have put of white tape a cross on his head. In his cage they had put up a very large mirror and to the astonishment of the scientists the elephant was able to understand that the elephant reflecting in that mirror was himself. The prove was that the elephant with his long nose tried to take off the white cross.
Our beloved Deepak Chopra put it in another way. He said: “Human beings are the only species who are aware that they are aware”. Well, Deepak, elephants also what white crosses taped on their heads is concerned.
So the question is in how far the fish swim in the aquarium of the restaurant thinking their days are numbered. Or is their level of awareness so low that they just don’t get it?
While eating fish and seeing them swim in an aquarium, fished out and chopped to death, how reflective and sentimental should we be?

But what has this to do with the claim that food is the best in France and Japan?
As much as the accompanying image of this posting, a picture made in Tokyo today.
************************************

To learn more about Deepak Chopra, click on:

www.chopra.com

No comments: