Have you had the Scottish cast iron roasted salmon with toasted sesame oil and tamari glaze at the Carriage House Restaurant in East Boothbay? Have you had the white and black sesame encrusted, Grand Marnier teriyaki glazed, wild caught pan seared salmon at Boathouse Bistro in Boothbay Harbor? Have you had the crispy seared salmon on a bed of crimini mushroom risotto at Little Village Bistro in Wiscasset? Have you had the seared Scottish salmon with a dill and leek nage at the Thistle? How about the orange maple glazed salmon at McSeagull’s?

I know, unless you've been to my house for dinner, you haven't had my horseradish roasted salmon. And you'd remember if you had. Unless, of course, I made you drink two manhattans before dinner, in which case you may have forgotten.

You'd also remember if you've ever had some of Jon Lewis' famous smoked salmon.

That salmon has become an annual tradition around the holidays. It is ridiculous. You could say he's created a monster. Once he gives you a piece of it, wrapped in some cellophane and nestled in a brown paper bag with a few greasy spots on it, with an unforgettable smoky aroma wafting from it, you can't help but hope he still likes you next year at this time. Like as in real life. He doesn’t do Facebook.

I can pretty much guarantee you won't be tempted to buy smoked salmon from a grocery store — or even a seafood market — after you've had some of Lewis'. This past Christmas season he smoked over 50 pounds of the mouthwatering delicacy.

A story on the AlterNet website, an online community that publishes original journalism advocating the environment, human rights and social justice, claims that the Atlantic salmon we're eating these days is “genetically eroded,” — not the same wild salmon our ancestors ate — and that most, if not all, of the salmon we buy in grocery stores and seafood markets is farmed. “What appears on our dinner plates is a substitute copy, a genetic dilution of a once mighty fish, the adaptive king of the sea, and a significant food for coastal humans since prehistoric times,” it states.

Whoa. Pretty lofty claim there. And Lewis, a marine biologist who has been catching, and smoking, salmon since he lived in Alaska 30 years ago, concurred.

Whatever. Salmon is still really good any way you look at it. And speaking of looking at it, Lewis also informed me that that pretty salmon-colored flesh is fake. At least in the farmed salmon we get around here. I’ll tell you all about that in the rest of the story, about Lewis’s smoked salmon, later. I don’t want to get all scientific and technical in this column. This is meant to be fun, not informative. Speaking of fun, it’s almost 5:00. MANHATTAN TIME! YAY!

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Salmon.

Aside from being wicked good, salmon is wicked healthy, too. I think. I just learned that not all salmon is created equally.

See? I was having fun until I Googled the health benefits of salmon. While it is constantly toted for its high content of Omega-3 fatty acids, which aren't all that easy to come by, there's some disagreement about just how healthy farmed salmon is, as compared to wild caught. And as Jon Lewis told me, most of the salmon we're eating isn't wild caught.

I'm not going to get into this, because as I said, this column is for fun. So Google it yourself. I will tell you this much, as relayed by the AUTHORITY NUTRITION website: “Whereas wild salmon eats other organisms found in its natural environment, farmed salmon is given a processed high-fat feed in order to produce larger fish.”

Who knew? Not me. Jon Lewis, and probably Margaret Salt McLellan, did.

Anyway. I’ve done it again — run out of space. If you want my recipe for horseradish roasted salmon, email me at: suzithayer@boothbayregister.com. In the meantime try any, or all, of the different delectable salmon dishes at the fabulous local restaurants mentioned above.

P.S. This has absolutely nothing to do with salmon, but a friend just texted me a photo of a poster at Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta. Are you familiar with the 15th/16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch? I used to have a large print of his “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”  I have an old friend who, if he was around in the 1500s, I'd swear he posed for one of the characters in the lower part of that painting.

Anyway, “The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch” will be shown on Jan. 14 at 2 p.m.

See ya there!