I do not remember exactly when this concept entered into my life, but when it did, it has always stayed there and have never thought about making it myself. Many people in the industry refer to this as an old school method of cooking as it was mainly famous in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
History
This dish was at its peak in the 1980’s. The idea originally came to Paul Bocuse after he had visited a food show in France a few decades ago. There he noticed cold salmon dressed with slices of cucumber that were made to look like the scales of a fish. After this experience he decided to try something alike using potatoes instead of cucumbers and made it a hot dish instead of cold. Fish with potato scales had been popular at Bocuse’s restaurant for a very long time.
Daniel Boulud, chef at the time at Le Cirque, New York, says that he got the inspiration for this dish from Paul Bocuse. Boulud trained under Bocuse for about four days and was fortunate enough to stumble upon this technique that he fell in love with. He tried various cuts of potatoes along with various other types of fish. In his restaurant thirty to forty portions of this particular dish was sold on a daily basis.
This concept of a crispy element in a dish can be used for various other seafood as well. Back in the day at Aureole, New York, chef Charles Palmer was very well known for his creation of sea scallop sandwich which included very thin and fragile potato disks. A twist of this dish was famous at Citrus in Los Angeles, where chef Michel Richard used to prepare bay scallops folded inside golden crust of shredded potatoes. Similarly, there were many different twists picked up from this concept and it was very popular during this time of the century.
(Click here to know more about the history in detail: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/16/magazine/food-cutting-edge.html)
Personal Experience
I took a try making this dish. For this I purchased a whole rainbow trout and decided to process it myself. It was much more difficult to make than I originally thought it would be. The potato crisps would not stick to the fish at all and later realized that I had to dip the potato disks in some sort of fat. I completed the dish by pan searing the trout and frying the disks separately just so I would be familiar about how it would taste. For this sauce I needed some tart ingredient and decided to use the pickling liquid from my carrot pickle. I made a fish stock from the carcass of the fish and added fennel bulb, onion and carrot. I made a roux and added this fish stock in this and also added the pickling liquid in this (This was probably one of the best sauces I have prepared to pair with seafood) (Click here for the pickle recipe: https://theoryof.food.blog/2019/07/29/pickled-carrots/ ). In the plate I poured the sauce, placed some mashed potato in the middle, blanched asparagus over it and then finally, the potato scaled fish.
For the following image (plated by me) the plating was inspired from the following website: https://menu-magazine.com/maui-dining-guide-maui-dining-maui-restaurants-chef-genos-potato-scaled-mahi-mahi/
Importance
This leads me to the point that why this is important in the industry as well as why it is important for me. Whenever dishes like this make an entrance in the culinary world there is a spark of inspiration spread among everyone in the industry, including chefs and culinary students. Innovations make us realize that there are infinite possibilities when it comes to the techniques of how to cook food.
Theory Of Food 