Last week, I was invited to spend a few days at Skuna Bay, a salmon fishery in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. The Skuna Bay fish farm is surrounded by some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen: snow-capped mountains lined with pine, fresh air blowing in off the ocean, clean water, and nowhere in sight a smokestack nor even much terrestrial life except for the random bear and a handful of salmon fishermen. There may be some First Nation’s folks in there somewhere, but I didn’t see any.
Skuna Bay makes an effort to run their fishery in a sustainable manner, by limiting the number of salmon they nurture and by putting into place other practices that ensure our grandchildren will be able to eat salmon. Skuna Bay is the only salmon farmer in the world to receive Best Aquaculture Practices certification. All of which would mean little if this were not stratospherically tasty salmon.
One night, in the kitchen at The Lodge at Golden River, we sampled some sashimi, just salmon loin, sliced thin, served raw by Chef Terry Macdonald, with a bowl of wasabi and soy on the side. One taste, and I knew I didn’t want any of the wasabi and soy. Although it’s a very good complement to raw fish, I just couldn’t bring myself to cloud the flavor of the fish with any condiment. The fish was so clean tasting, so rich with light-tasting fat, so beautiful just to look at.
We eat a fair amount of salmon at home, and we try to get the good stuff. As I mentioned above, you can get fresh Copper River salmon at Costco, a fine piece of fish; at that same Costco you can also get frozen salmon, which we found almost inedible. Chicagoland restaurants carry salmon at both high-and low-ends of the quality spectrum, of course, but none are quite like Skuna Bay. It’s not another damn salmon; it’s almost tastes like a different species.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this fish is generally available to consumers, though you can get it at Standard Market (it's like $80/fish wholesale, but as Lance said about the black heroin in “Pulp Fiction,” when you try it, you’ll know where the money went). Fortune Fish carries Skuna Bay as well as a lot of other cool stuff (Art Jackson told me last night that he gets eel from FF for his eel pie – and he plans to make a special lamprey pie in honor of HRM Elizabeth for her Jubilee celebration – that dame has eclectic tastes).
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