12/12: Piranha Club X Enemy Kitchen present: Eric & Mike’s Christmas Carp Migration

Throughout Central & Eastern Europe, carp is king of the Christmas dinner table, whether sauteed with a dark beer in Berlin, fried crisp and served with potato salad in Prague, or presented as the center piece of a 12 course, meatless spread in Warsaw. In old school Polish homes you might even find said main course swimming about in the bathtub until its call to duty. A lucky diner will find a coin tucked underneath the whole fishes’ scales. From Japan to Germany, the carp is a symbol of good luck and the perfect offering to celebrate the ending of the year and look ahead to good tidings for the next.

Carp has been celebrated both for its fortuitous reputation and its sweet white flesh for millennia, fished from native waters such as the Danube and Amur River. As cultures have spread, as they inevitably do, breeds such as the grass carp and the bighead have been introduced and cultivated in other great waterways such as the Tigris and the Mississippi. And this is where the carp’s recent history enters the American imagination– with a reputation as an alien invader. Even before it was sinisterly dubbed “invasive”, it has long been disdained as a bottom feeder, a garbage fish. Chefs Eric & Mike will challenge this dubious American food phobia and will call on the great carp eating traditions of the old world during this celebratory time of year. The carp migrated here long ago and now its time for its rich cultural significance to follow.