Daily writing prompt

What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

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Beluga caviar.

Back in 1988, the magazine where I worked had readers and subscribers in the Soviet Union. A writer from Eastern Europe was in town and he brought us some as a gift. It was black and glistening and piled high into a clear, unlabeled glass container the size of a large mayonnaise jar.

We stopped what we were doing and gathered in the kitchen (the magazine was run out of our editor’s house.) Our boss was a generous man and we all got to taste it. That first mouthful spoiled all other caviars for me. It was delicate, almost indescribable, like the first scent of the ocean when you are traveling to the shore. I believe an awed silence fell. Lumpfish would never be the same. When my brother got married a year or two later, and I wanted a gift that truly expressed my extravagant delight and affection for them both, I bought the couple some Beluga to take on their honeymoon.

For a while after the fall of the USSR, Beluga caviar was pretty much unobtainable in the US. Imports started up again in the ‘oughts, but it’s much further out of my price range now — even in my prosperous retirement — than it was back when I was a struggling peon at a magazine.