From grocery store macaroni and cheese to gourmet sushi rolls topped with caviar

The closest I ever got to eating seafood as a child was canned tuna and fish sticks (thanks mom).


And since it's much harder to learn to love a specific food as an adult than it is a child, I never really began eating fish or lobster or crab. When I first started dating my husband, I could always tell when he recently cooked salmon because his place reeked, and I'd gag on the stench alone.


So needless to say, I was not thrilled that I was going to be accompanying my new boss at the food magazine to a new Japanese restaurant opening on the upper west side. It promised to be seafood course after seafood course - 12 courses to be exact.

I could handle part of the first course - sake and cucumber strips! - but I knew I was in trouble when the waitress put crab salad under my nose. Soon thereafter, my boss began chastising me for picking around the orange parts.

And it only got harder from there for me, although any seafood lover would have l-o-v-e-d to trade places with me. There was tuna tar tar over guacamole; handmade rolls made with eel, crab, lobster, shrimp, and a variety of fish topped with caviar; and, thankfully so I didn't go hungry: skirt steak with a sweet teriyaki sauce. Every single plate was amazingly beautiful, yet that didn't make up for the fact that it was beautiful... seafood.

I will say this for myself: I tried everything. I didn't like much, but I tried everything, which is something I always try to do not just with food, but in life in general.

When I used to babysit these adorable girls while in college, I tried to instill this trait into the 3-, 6-, and 8-year-olds, especially when it came to food. They would generally wrinkle up their noses when I suggested they try something new, and I always brought the conversation back to their favorite food: macaroni and cheese. I used to ask them how they'd feel if they'd never tried macaroni and cheese for the first time, and tried to point out what they'd be missing. It used to make them think, but they would usually just then ask me to make them macaroni and cheese instead of eating whatever it was I had made them to eat.

Though I guess the kids had a point. It was around the 9th or 10th plate of seafood put in front of me that I thought "enough is enough. I'm totally done with this because it's all tasting the same - like fish." I apparently just don't like it. Maybe it's an acquired taste, but I haven't yet acquired that particular taste yet.

I totally would have rather been at Puttanesca, the Italian restaurant across the street from my apartment to order my usual: the four-cheese, gourmet macaroni and cheese. Yum-my!