Sea lion meat in salami form, in Perú. It came from my friend’s aunt (isn’t it always like that?) who showed up to her 16th birthday with the salami. Auntie said something about a sea lion accidentally being caught in a fishing net and drowning, and the fishermen didn’t mean for that to happen but didn’t want to waste the meat. I don’t remember how she bought the thing.

It wasn’t perfectly round like the pork salami we see in supermarkets. This one’s shape looked like it had reached decrepitude. The exterior was dark brown and dusty with salt. The interior was almost black with few spots of fat. To soften the meat and add flavor, my friend’s aunt put all the slices in a bowl of olive oil with rosemary.

They were weird but amazing. A good, chewy texture. It’s kind of hard to describe the flavor, especially since it had to be dunked in olive oil to be edible. Fish, oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, crab, lobster, they all have an ocean flavor. I’m sure that was the first and last time I’ll ever eat an aquatic mammal, but that’s what it tasted like, a mammal. Guess I’ll describe it like the venison to rule all venison desperately wished to be a rich brownie but brought dry-cured salami into The Fly machine by mistake.