New Orleans Food Questions And Comments

What's Wrong With Salmon?

Ed asks:
I heard you giving Bob DelGiorno a hard time a few days ago on WWL Radio about his liking of salmon. You seemed to really hate that fish. Then you turned around and said that you liked salmon in Alaska when Bob told you about some salmon he caught up there. Explain yourself.

Tom sez:
Most of the salmon we get in our local restaurants and grocery stores is farm-raised Atlantic salmon. And most of that is actually grown in Pacific waters off the coast of Chile. The nature of most farm-raised fish is that it requires an unnatural diet for the fish, which dramatically changes their flavor. Indeed, there's such a strong effect on salmon that the fish must be fed a special diet right before they're harvested to they'll have that distinctive pink-orange salmon color. (If they didn't do that, the fish would be pale brown and very unappealing.) I find this also affects the flavor, which simply is not as fine as what I remember when salmon first became popular in the New Orleans area. (That was right after the state started shutting down the commercial fishing of important local fish like trout and redfish.)

Pacific salmon is a different story. When we get it, it's almost always wild-caught fish. A few restaurants make a point of this--notably Bayona and Marigny Brasserie. The flavor is more assertive and much better. (Although not all would agree. Most people want fish not to taste much like fish.) I was in Alaska the same time Bob was, and ate all the wild-caught king and silver salmon I could. The best of all is Copper River salmon, which runs in the spring and is deliciously fatty. But we don't get that much here, because few people know the difference. Check it out and you'll become a wild salmon fan, too.

Revised 3/10/08

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