A fish hater goes to Basque country  â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â
You're subscribed to SELFISH FOREVER with Ash Ambirge, a spunky newsletter about how to live & work from anywhereâand turn your creativity into your career ð¥
â --------------------------------------------------------------- â The Art of Putting Tiny Little Sea Terrorists in Your Mouth A fish hater tries the unspeakable in Franceâs Basque countryâand doesnât actually scream â There are things that you do growing up in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, and things you do not do. For example, itâs perfectly fine if youâd like to cut out the heart of a mammal and serve it for breakfast, but fish, by which I mean anything that smells like a sailor's groinâWHICH IS ALL OF ITâ is not something that people like me grow up knowing how to do. So when you take me to F-R-A-N-C-E, and you put me in a raw S-E-A-F-O-O-D B-A-R, I have to coach myself in the corner. ("Just plug your nose and pretend it's a wet noodle!"âa piece of advice that is only effective when high. Since I am never high, my life is perpetually just one bite away from total psychological ruin.)
â
âHereâs what happens when Iâm confronted with a buffet of tiny, squishy baby aliens from the underworld:
â - I will go to the bathroom and attempt to walk in such a way that I seem entirely cool and unaffected, like I do this all the time. I am sophisticated! See how my hair waves in the breeze behind me? I belong here. I practically know the owners!â
â
- Upon arrival to the bathroom, I will frantically search for a light switch that will inevitably be on the outside, likely while tripping over a trash can.
â
- After facing the murderous stares of three other people impatiently waiting to pee, I'll pull up the restaurant's menu on my phone to find anything that (a) I can pronounce; and, (b) Wonât cause suspicion that I am, in fact, a feral redneck slob.
â
- On the way back, Iâll spill someoneâs drink while feather boa dancing my way down the aisle as if I am, again, ENTIRELY COOL AND UNAFFECTED. (I donât know why, but when I get nervous, I feather boa dance. Someone needs to help me.)
â It was a similar scene at [La Cabane à Huîtres](), an oyster bar at the top of the hill in Biarritz, located in Franceâs Basque region. I had managed to survive the gauntlet back from the bathroom, though the pressure was on more than ever: the owner, who was serving us at the bar, was extra, extra stylish, with big, black Iris Apfel glasses, and the kind of white blouse that says, âBest of luck trying to be me.â But god, was she nice. Of course she was nice. The people you want to hate always are. âThis wine is aged under theâwhat is it called?âthe sea,â she told us in adorably French-accented English as she showed us the bottle of [Egiategia](=). And, in fact, thatâs exactly why we were there: it was the wine I was after more than anything, having read about this witchcraft on The New York Timesâ 36 Hours in Biarritz. Egiategia: the winemaker thatâs dunking vats of white wine in the bay of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, then letting them hang out for 3 months underwaterâchilling, enjoying the waves, getting a delightful tickle from the ocean movement. We had a bottle of the Dena Dela, which has a fresh slice of lemon thrown into the vat, made with the Colombard and Ugni Blanc grapes, and listed as being from âsouth-south-west France,â in case you tried to lump them in with the rowdy riviera crowd. (I like this denomination. I may start saying âfish-fish-hater,â just to make the point.) Let me tell you: apparently I eat all sorts of things when you ploy me with French wine. Being an oyster bar, we ordered oystersâof which, to my own surprise, I have recently become a fan (perhaps because all I have to do is swallow, which goes along with many of my philosophies). However, these oysters they served us? MY GOD, THE SALT! THE BRINE! THE LEMON! ALL TOGETHER WITH THE CRISP, REFRESHING WHITE! I was finally getting the hang of this. The oysters were the âSpéciales Bretagne N°3,â which came from Brittany and were listed on the menu as âoyster iodine of the open sea.â So apparently, I donât like fish and I donât like seafood, but I DO like oysters and I do like it when they taste like the sea. Who am I??? (Itâs the salt. Pour salt on anything and Iâll eat it.) But of course, I shouldnât have said that, because soon my dining partner was ordering a âPortion of Snalesââand it didnât need to be spelled correctly in English to know what I had gotten myself into. ð Escargot: the thing youâre terrified to eat and also really, really mad at yourself for not eating. France is the biggest consumer, as you might expectâPortugalâs surprisingly #2âwhere they eat 7 million of these tiny little mouth terrorists a year. And yet, there is something about being at a stylish little bar in France, where the white-bloused ownerâwhose name I have learned since is, of course, âSophieââoozes elegance, and guests have some of the best highlights youâve ever seen, and yet thereâs this total artsy-cool air about it all: the Chuck Taylors spotted under the maxi dress; the photograph of the naked man carrying two suitcases; the straw hat with âà huîtresâ sewn in blue cursive, and the chef, who is Sophieâs partner, wearing a zip-up rocker sweatshirt as he floats in and out of the kitchen, teaching one of the young girls how to shuck oystersâand, for a moment, stopping to explain it to us, too. (I had lots of questions, such as âWill you please adopt me?â) Even a fish hater like me wants to buy into the experience of it all: this lifestyle, these people, their glamorously hip way of moving through the world. Or, at least, a 30â x 10â wooden cabin filled with chalkboards, fish & booze. So, when the snails showed upâa plate of thick, pointy, spiral-shaped, green-tinted shells that had the shape of, dare I say, Velveeta Shells & Cheese (minus the cheese)âI gazed upon the plate with newfound bravery: I, Ash Ambirge, was going to do it.
â â
Let me just pause right here and say: Iâm glad I didnât look up any of the details beforehand. I quickly learned that this type of snail isn't actually classified as escargot, which are technically only land snailsâa fact that disappoints me greatly. (Now I'm just casually eating snails for no good reason?!) Instead, what I'm eating is whelk, which just happens to be the largest type of sea snail in Franceâs Atlantic waters. Because of COURSE it is. Of course that would be my destiny. When empty, the whelk shell is cream-colored, but when alive, itâs covered with a thin brownish layer called the periostracum, something that sounds a little bit too much like an undignified human organ to want to say aloud. But the little bastard is cunning: the whelk uses the edge of its shell to burst open the shells of other sea creatures it wants to eat like Jack the sadistic seahorse Ripper. Apparently, itâs a carnivoreââAND APPARENTLYââit feeds on worms and other mollusks, a fact that does not soothe me at all. I am expecting a little shop of horrors to arrive on the plate: Teeth! Antennae! Fangs! A slimy, flappy, wavy, wormy, tongue-like bottom! TEXTURE. So much texture. And eyessssâterrifying little pingpong eyeballs that Iâd have to put in my mouth. Alas, when the plate arrives it looks like an innocent collection of little seashells, the same kind I collected when I was nine. ð Then, we see the toothpicks. I realize the mission all-too-soon. There is a neat little pile on the side of the plate, and we quickly gather that these were for poking: stick one inside the shell, swirl it around, rip the carcass from its tomb, and then pop it into your mouth, like a gastropod popsicle. He goes first. Poke, swirl, pop. I widen my eyes in fear. âNottttt baaaddddd,â he says nonchalantly, chewing and swallowing. He eats another, then queues one up for me. I can't look at it. He assures me that there are no antennae, nor feet, nor giant, creepy eyeballs, and so finally, I look. I am surprised to see what amounts to a little white blob, like a mystery-flavored gummy snack. When I look this up later, I discover that, when alive, it does look a bit like the Ghostbusters marshmallow manâwhich is exactly what I said since the beginning: squishy little baby aliens, indeed. I take a deep breath. Hit ârecordâ on Instagram stories. And then slowly the blob comes floating toward my mouth. As soon as it hits my tongue, I feel relief: it doesn't have the texture of a cowâs tongue, as Iâd imagined, but rather, like eating a used tire. In other words: much better than expected. But what was surprising, however, was the taste. Once I got past the gore, I realized something even more terrifying: this was delicious. What??? How? Who? The aioli, of course. Like salt, itâs another one of those âmakes anything edibleâ kind of concoctions. Fortunately, they gave us a vat of it, making everything taste like an X-rated garlicky eden. (I mean, I guess if you have to use a slug as a vehicle for garlic and oil, Iâm on board?) The good news is, there are whopping amounts of antioxidants in these little snail bods: weâre talking anti-cancer, anti-inflammation, and probably anti-aging, if Iâm being honest, given that Iâm pretty sure if I ate these things all the time, rather than Fritos Scoops dipped in jalapeño cream cheese, I wouldnât have this fatty, sagging neck. Though it must be said that, without my fatty, sagging neck, I wouldnât have been wearing a turtleneck, and I have to say: that turtleneck was making me look way more chic than I was. Between the snails, which I managed to eat without screaming, the wine, and that sweet, sweet turtleneck, I was convinced that I, Ash Ambirge, had pulled it off. And you know what? It was one of the best experiences I had all year. There is joy in challenging yourself to be a new person for a night. There is joy in wondering if maybe there could be a new seafood-eating you, on the other side of that bite. That maybe that plate comes with all sorts of other change, too: more exercise, less wine aged under an armpit, more time for volunteering, less wishing the neighborâs yappy dog would get a rare form of melanoma and croak. New experiences make us new peopleâand thatâs where the joy is. It is not the snails, but the effort: to have the courage to show up and try on a new life. To believe different things about yourself, even if only for an evening. To imagine yourself as the woman with the Iris Apfel glasses, serving the wine, being effortless and original and cool as she pops a raw piece of fish into her mouth. You might not be that person tomorrow (or, um, ever), but tonight, you are no one else. Tonight, you are free. None of your usual hangups are here; tonight, none of your old nonsense comes along. Sometimes, we all need a night off from the person weâve been all our lives. And sometimes, even fish-fish haters from Susquehanna County can find delight in the unexpected, as they walk ever-so-awkwardly out of a place and think: âBest of luck trying to be me.â â --------------------------------------------------------------- â New Workshop Alert! ðª Wish YOU could eat disgusting things in foreign countries while simultaneously pretending to be more sophisticated than you are? Been thinking about starting an online business you can do from anywhereâor revamping the one you've got so it doesn't suck like a gastropod popsicle?
â
You need [Selfish 101]()âa new starter workshop from me, Ash, thatâs going to walk you through a plan for setting up a Selfish Business: a social-free, constant-content-creation-hamster-wheel-free, low-stress approach to a modern online business you can do from *anywhere*. End goal?
â
A $250K online business around your passions. While working 4-hour half days. And traveling 500% more.
â
You'll also get information on how to enroll in Selfish School, my full comprehensive program for making it all happen from start to finish.
â
Pre-order Selfish 101 now using code ENTERINGMYSELFISHERA for 10% off! Then watch starting next Friday, May 19th, when it dropsâyou'll get an email as soon as it's available to stream.
â [Pre-Order Today & Get 10% Off]() â â â How to live & work from anywhere in the worldâ
and turn your creativity into your career ð¥ â WITH ASH AMBIRGE + Sweary outbursts
+ Unpopular opinions about crustaceans
+ New ideas about ways to earn a living that don't require you to be a sucker
+ How to actually enjoy your life while working less and visiting Ireland more
+ A real zest for extreme pearl wearing
+ Favoritism for bars with scary-ass mafia pool rules
(MY QUARTERS WERE THERE, SON)
+ Zero ambition to be a good girl who bakes casseroles & smiles politely
+ BUT ALSO: a creepy affection for small-town Main Streets & freshly-mowed lawns
+ Currently searching for the most livable places in the world (and looking through people's windows)
+ Unbridled enthusiasm for storage units and guys named Bob
+ Deep fear of waking up and not having any water on the nightstand
+ Entirely unbalanced accounts of everything, including my morals
+ At least three Freudian slips around my true feelings about bracelets
(They make your arms look like baby wiener sausages at an Italian wedding) P.S. Have you read [my book on living & working differently]() yet?
It's a real blast to have on the coffee table when the in-laws come over.
â â[Unsubscribe from All of Selfish]( | [Or, Select Newsletter Topics](
â
â
177 Huntington Ave Ste 1703, Boston, MA 02115