Eating Authors: Bo Balder

This week’s EATING AUTHORS guest is Bo Balder, a member of Codex, the online writing community we know and love. Bo also lives in the Netherlands, and so I never expected to actually meet her. But of course that was before this past summer’s world science fiction convention in Helsinki, and the rest as they say is history!

Bo is primarily a short story writer — and perhaps you’ve seen her work in such venues as Clarkesworld or F&SF — but she’s also written a novel, The Wan, which takes on the challenges of what happens when humans reach another world but forget their own history and technology, amidst a hostile and alien biosystem. The solution embraced by one of the book’s main characters managed to both delight and horrify me at the same time, giving new meaning to the old phrase, “you are what you eat.”

LMS: Welcome, Bo. Share the where and why and what of your most memorable meal,
please.

BB: The restaurant was a tottery wooden shack reached after driving down from the cliffs of Bretagne, France, to the seaside. The sea in question was the Atlantic, reaching far inland with a probing finger that would flood by high tide and become mud flats at low tide.

It was low tide. We pulled off our shoes and went reconnoitering over the muddy sea bottom. We learned how oysters are farmed (in sacks on racks). We saw a French family sprinkle salt over holes in the mud and capture the razor shells that came questing up. They put them in a plastic bag, already half full, and told us they were planning to eat them that evening. I vowed to try them if the restaurant had any.

We cleaned our feet as best we could (sea bottom is sticky, blackish mud) and entered the restaurant. The lobby was a big open room, with a shallow pool in the middle, with dozens of kinds of fish and shellfish in wooden crates for sale. Apparently the restaurant doubled as fish market… We wended our way through to the dining room.

It was full of large French families waiting for food. Luckily we had reserved a table ahead — my husband grew up in Brussels, which is a good thing, because although I have some French, it’s not phone proof. His is…

We were seated at one end of a long narrow table and got a menu and a small bowl of appetizers: periwinkles, accompanied by a winkling implement to get the little suckers out of their shells. They had an intense, dark, almost liquorish-like taste. Interesting, for sure, but not in large quantities.

Then the lobster bib arrived. The waiter tied the sleeved, lap-length bib around my husband’s neck and behind his back and proceeded to lay down something like a hammer and tongs. I was glad I’d chosen the oysters, I knew I wouldn’t have to open them myself.

While we waited for the food to arrive, the other tables started getting served. Huge platters of seafood got carried in, and not just for the large parties. A five-pound heap of everything that swims in the sea was set down for an elderly couple and they set out to devour it. I wished I’d chosen a huge variety of food like that! I wished I could eat that much… What is it with French people that they can eat like that and only gain a little bit of middle-aged spread?

After my lobster bisque, my half dozen of the famed ridged oysters of the region, the “Creuse de Belon” were absolutely delicious, superfresh and salty, not even needing pepper or lemon. My husband destroyed the lobster with all his might until his platter looked like a red and pink striped bomb site.

The food was simply prepared, but so fresh and so good that I could eat there every week. Too bad it’s a ten-hour drive from home…

#SFWApro