Fillet

Raw

Sara Dickerman

A sweet bulge peristalses down the gullet leaving a sting of metal butter and saltwater on the palate. Whether it is carpaccio, steak tartare, Ethiopian kitfo, quail eggs, or toro sashimi, it seats the eater on the compelling edge of delight and disgust. Each bite smacks of sex and death. It's adult food.

Raw flesh is sexy. M.F.K. Fisher's account of her first time with an oyster is a delightfully erotic coming of age tale. "I remember hearing from my mother say that it was vulgar as well as extremely unpleasant to do anything with an oyster but swallow it as quickly as possible, without thinking, but that the after-taste was rather nice. " But contrary to her mother's advice, young Mary Francis Kennedy lingered before downing the blue point. "I swallowed once, and felt light and attractive and daring, to know what I had done. Oysters, my delicate taste buds were telling me, oysters are simply marvelous. More, more!" 1

Raw flesh is food at its most natural. No heat has transformed the moist tissue or rid it of bacteria and parasites. We're eating meat as close to living as it gets...and as close to death. In the case of the live scallop special offered at some sushi joints, a tasty mollusk gulps its last oxygen from low in the esophagus.

Raw flesh is also natural in the sense that it is uncivilized. In his classic study of mythology, The Raw and the Cooked, Claude Levi-Strauss visualizes cooking's symbolic message as a transformation of the natural to the cultural. Rituals involving symbolic cooking serve to de-naturalize those too close to the raw or natural world. The older unmarried sister of some French brides was held over the oven to cook her out of her uncivilized unmarried state. Certain Pueblo Indians gave birth to their babies over hot sand to cook them into the world of culture.2 The eating of raw flesh in today's hypochondriac, preserved and shrinkwrapped world might then serve the opposite purpose: that is to usher us back into a more natural, simplified state. Think of it as Walden on a bed of vinagered rice. We escape the land of Ho-Hos and croissandwiches by going raw.

Raw flesh is a modern leisure experience in itself. It's an adventure vacation; a trip from the heavily prepared dishes of everyday American existence. Oysters and clams excepted, we basically eat raw flesh in ethnic restaurants: Japanese, Thai, Korean, Ethiopian, Italian, French.

But raw flesh, as we eat it today is not so much natural as a symbol of naturalness. Presentation and condiments take the place of searing, grilling and broasting. Sushi and sashimi are laid out on pristine white beds of rice on lacquer trays. We mix the wasabi and soy, dip carefully before consuming the slightly larger than bite size morsel in indulgent delight. Paper thin slices of carpaccio are fanned out on a plate, drizzled with the finest olive oils. Steak tartare comes artfully strewn with capers and a raw egg for us to blend into the beef.

Raw flesh is served sparingly, consciously resisting the current restaurant trend towards Rabalasian portions. Like nouvelle cuisine, raw cuisine is an aesthetic experience, not a particularly filling one. Meat is stripped of its utilitarian quality and imbued with the aesthetic. When we consume raw flesh we eat for eating's sake: for the most heightened blend of texture, taste and sensation.

It's ritual food. Why else would Americans limit the raw experience to restaurants when in fact, the best way to guarantee the freshness of the flesh is to sniff it at the market and slice it up on our own clean cutting boards? We submit entirely to our priest of rawness, the chef, who lays out for us geoduck and uni, tuna tartare and salmon carpaccio. We trust that she chose a good piece of flesh, a clean knife and a chicken-free work surface. We are beholden to this person who can, without heat, convert dangerous untempered flesh into a safe dish.

With rituals come taboos. Fish, seafood, and beef and sometimes eggs can be consumed raw, at least in months with R's in them. It would be unspeakable, however, to eat chicken and pork raw, let alone camel, rat, and dog. But in Japan, sashimi is not always just fish... sometimes, it is chicken. There are some legitimate reasons for avoiding certain raw flesh, salmonella and trichinosis play a part in this fear, but it seems strange to pick and choose your parasites, when hepatitis, e coli, and anisakiasis simplex, the famous sushi worm can thrive in the legitimate raw meats.

The ritual presentation of raw flesh serves as a buffer from what otherwise might be a graphic reminder of danger and mortality. If you can't cook it, better make it look pretty. In fact, the soy and ginger that accompany sushi may act as mild antiseptics to help protect the eater, just as citrus juice serves to cook ceviche.

Ignore the visions of hepatitis, sushi worm, and salmonella that dance in your head and enjoy. Raw flesh is a celebration of the both the sensual and the aesthetic, the natural and the cultured, the raw and the cooked.

1 M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me, republished in The Art of Eating (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), p. 374-375.

2 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, tr. John and Doreen Weightman, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), 334-338.