We moved to the Netherlands in October 2020. Public gatherings were banned shortly after we arrived. December came: dark, cold, windy, fireworks going off in every direction. It was Christmas Eve. We didn't know anyone. Through a language school I had found a friend — Japanese, also new to the country, also without many people around her. She had ended up here for a boyfriend who wasn't from here either. We were glad to have somewhere to go.

She laid out the table for temaki (手巻き) — rice, fish, vegetables, nori, wasabi. Everyone rolls their own. I looked closer at the fish.

Gerookte haringfilet — smoked herring.

She had used what was available at the local supermarket, the Albert Heijn around the corner. I had walked past the same display myself without once thinking to do this. She had made the connection. A Japanese home-cooked meal assembled from Dutch ingredients. Something ordinary in one context, completely unexpected in another.

It was brilliant. And it immediately unlocked something I hadn't thought about in years.

Smoked herring wrapped in seaweed brought back gwamegi (과메기) — semi-dried Pacific saury or herring, wrapped in gim (김), eaten with garlic stems, green onions, and gochujang. A regional specialty, available only briefly each winter. Gathered around a sang (상), the small low table, you would place a piece of gim on your palm, top it with the fish and the garnishes, then roll and eat in one motion.

I didn't particularly love the taste. It was a bit too fishy for me when I was young. But I loved the ritual. The adults ate it as anju, something to go alongside drinks. For me and my brother it was a late-night snack — staying up, sitting close, eating something we weren't quite sure about yet.

Over time, smoked herring gave way to nieuwe haring at our table. It tastes better — fresh-caught, lightly salted, seasonal, something that arrives with the early summer and signals the start of something. Guests love it. Easy to prepare, always available, versatile. It has become our go-to dinner menu.

When I have been away and am returning home, nieuwe haring is the first thing I crave. It grew on me.

Recently at a Japanese restaurant here, herring arrived chopped on a plate, nori fanned out alongside it. The waiter started to explain. I had already reached for the seaweed. He stopped mid-sentence. No explanation needed.

The Dutch eat haring differently. They hold it by the tail, tilt their head back, and lower it into their mouth whole. Chopped raw onion alongside. No seaweed, no wrapping, no ceremony. It is not salty the way jeotgal (젓갈) is — you can eat it as is. Where Koreans and Japanese find a way to fold fish into seaweed, the Dutch put haring in a small hotdog-like bun. The same fish, approached from an entirely different angle.

I looked up the Korean name: cheongeo (청어). I had heard it before without ever seeing the fish. My father had mentioned it more than once — at dinner, perhaps at the jesasang (제삿상), the ancestral memorial table, where certain foods appear because they were loved by people no longer there. His father had loved cheongeo. The bones were the only complaint. They are still there in the brined version — fine and soft, somehow not bothersome once you know to expect them.

Every time I eat the fish I think of my father thinking of his father. A name I grew up hearing, a fish loved by someone I met only as a child, too young to remember much. And now I eat it without thinking, in a country where it has always simply been part of the landscape.

My parents haven't visited yet. When they do, I will make nieuwe haring gim-ssam for dinner. I will show them how we eat it here. And we will make a new memory at the same table.