On my last night in Noumea, I go with Dr Bell and a few others to Au P'tit Cafe, supposedly the finest restaurant in Noumea. We eat outside on a deck that is all chrome, wood and fancy lights and which could have been anywhere in the swankier parts of Auckland. One of my dishes contains a slab of dark red raw fish. I ask Dr Bell what it is. He looks across the table, “Oh, you’re lucky, it’s bigeye.”
I take a bite intent on describing the taste. It proves impossible. The flesh is soft and simply dissolves in my mouth, as tantalizing and as ephemeral as the fleeting whiff of the waitress’s perfume. Suddenly I see the irony in how such big fish – typically the same length as me at 180 cm but considerably sturdier at up to 200 kg or more – could be made so vulnerable: it is because their flesh is so delicate.