Eel Appeal

When I lived in New York, I liked spending summers working at this Taiwanese cram school Monday to Thursdays. It paid well and was close to Shea. I was a Mets fan, so I went to a ton of weekday games. And since I couldn’t afford to travel, it was the next best thing. 

Once off the Roosevelt Avenue stop in Flushing, Queens, the walk to school was a sensory trip: crabs scurried against each other in bushels on morning sidewalks. The smell of Korean barbeque wafted from doors propped open on side streets. Vendors shouted in Mandarin, passing out leaflets about green cards and schools.  Hordes amassed around walk-up windows for bubble tea and red bean buns. The calm austerity of the Flushing Library juxtaposed the street’s mayhem.

Kids sent to this school by their parents were sweet and charming, despite that “summer camp” for 11-year olds meant studying 9th grade English.  Not to mention, some of them could barely speak English, and would sit next to someone who’d allegedly translate my lesson for the whole class. 

Some of the younger ones didn’t even know how to explain their neighborhood or where they lived. They just knew how to get home. By the end of the summer, some would have come so far they’d have outperformed the high school freshmen I was scheduled to teach that fall.

Incidentally, my birthday is in August. The owners of the school would tell my students and they’d bring thoughtful gifts. One girl brought in an old fashioned Coca-Cola bottle, inside of which were hundreds of mini origami animals. A boy brought me a gift certificate to East, an insanely huge Asian buffet where offerings include shark fin soup, a zillion kinds of sushi, 30 types of dim sum, and roast suckling pig.

But the most unusual gifts were watermelons, a gift that’s synonymous with good fortune.  As much as I appreciated them, it was a feat trying to trek them home. I felt weird cutting them up in front of the kids, so inevitably I’d haul them from the 7 to the F train, these melons bigger than some small dogs. They were conversation pieces, to say the least.

The week before we finished, when it was so hot it felt as if my clothes would melt off as I waited on the platform, the owners of the school brought teachers thank you gifts of fileted eel that was marinated and cryovaced. I always wondered if there was any significance to the timing of their gift. Is seafood a weird gift? Why eel in summer? Is it like soft shell crabs in spring– a seasonal thing? I didn’t know, but I loved it.

Then in Time Out this week I read how Japanese combat natsubate– heat-related summer fatigue– with eel, because it’s high in vitamin B, and is thought to be a source of strength and stamina. I wonder if the belief in eel’s restorative powers crossed cultures, or if the gift was just coincidence.

In any event, as we amble into the languid month of August, I’d like to test whether there really is something to eel in summer–or at the very least, satiate my craving.  Off the top, I’m thinking Sushi Ko for any variation on an unagi handroll, or Sushi Taro for unadon– broiled eel over rice. Any other suggestions?