When you travel to a foreign country for a long time you eventually begin to miss things. Food. Not food, but certain foods. Everyone has their certain ones. When you immigrate the same thing happens. You miss and crave certain foods--but its for the rest of your life.

I have such a food, a certain love, it's a particular sun-dried salty fish called Vobla. Any russian knows what Vobla is. I would describe it as resembling American Beef Jerky, but made from fish rather then beef.... Asian cultures have similar snacks made from dried seafood of every kind. I know this b/c I've tried them all, looking for my "Rosebud" as Citizen Kane looked for his childhood sled. But the particular taste is not the same. Like wine, and grapes from which it's made, a salt fish's taste depends on where on the planet it lives and what species it is. So in the States, this fish can only be found in a rare Russian deli.

So all this is fine and dandy. I've found a deli that has it. But the thing is this guy smells strong. Like garlic, its scent dies your hands and everything it touches. And like the finest French cheeses, the stinkier it is the more the French love it. Except I'm not in France, or in Russia. So everyone within ear-shoot of my indulgence files their complaint with me about the fine smelling delicacy. It's the story of many immigrants, far from their birthplace, defending their chance to eat a meal which lives so vividly in their memory but so rarely graces their palette.
On a different set of shores, certain foods become a sharp and spiney relic to be eaten in haste and solitude, so as not to smear the cultural fabric on which you sit.