Cobb Job

Anchower, I know. But it is good to be back. The malign influence of Todd English seems to have settled in like the fog in Prufrock around the kitchens of the Back Bay, as exemplified by the inexplicable festooning of an innocent Cobb salad with smoked salmon at Turner Fisheries. Turner Fisheries has been allowing conventioneers in the land of the bean and the Cod to get their lobster on without going outdoors since back when Mission of Burma was playing at the Bradford, but it has a special place in the heart of the Cod's lizard brain, thanks to the deeply tanned and thoroughly sequined chowder spokesmodel in mermaid costume Turner Fisheries deployed at an early 80s chowderfest at the New England Aquarium that a younger Cod was shanghaied into working at. In any case, a  pound or two of shrimp and crab tossed with lettuce, then paved with smoked salmon that is the preternatural peach of the Cosabella things they sell around the corner might be delicious, or an excellent value, but it is not a Cobb salad, which refers to a specific combination of ingredients, as surely as BLT means Bacon, Lettuce, &  Tomato. There is room for disagreement--one might, conceivably, sub asparagus for haricots verts in a nicoise, and persist in insisting on calling it a nicoise. It would be wrong, but at least fathomable. In an effort to be whimsical, however, you have chefs tossing together whatever ingredients people are hot on these days, and appropriating a familiar name: "this is a PB&J, made with bison carpaccio, ramp confit, with Jerusalem artichoke 'bread.'" No. Heidi Pollock had a stirring denunciation of the debasement of the Caesar salad, in the late lamented Might. Fortunately, it is available in this entertaining collection, so you do not have to attempt to divine where it might be squirreled away in the Inveraritian expanses of the McSweeney's empire. Some interesting thoughts on Cobb here, though anyone who orders a salad at IHOP ought to expect to reap the whirlwind. More soon, I think.