Fishing For Gold

North Carolinian JENNIFER PILLA TAYLOR finds the fish that lay the GOLDEN EGGS in the mountains of her own home state.

FROM A MOUND of fish guts, Sally Eason has plucked a sack of gold.
Every afternoon, workers at her Sunburst Trout Company carefully push bright-orange eggs from the skeins that hold them in the bellies of female trout. The roe is rinsed and rinsed again, mixed with salt and a pinch of sugar, then packed in jars and given the glamorous label: caviar.

Fifteen years ago, these egg sacks were considered a nuisance to Sunburst’s trout-processing work and consigned to the compost heap like any other innards. Then Eason’s father, who founded the family business 55 years ago, offhandedly remarked that it was a shame to waste them. They started experimenting with caviar recipes, aiming for just the right ratio of salt to sugar and storing the results in used baby-food jars.

“Anybody who knew what we were doing thought it was the kookiest thing they’d ever heard,” Eason says.

Turns out they were just a few years ahead of their time. Alerted to the fact that the prehistoric sturgeon that bears beluga is headed toward extinction, several top-tier American chefs have turned to domestic-caviar varieties in the past few years. And Sunburst’s golden roe, farmed near Asheville in the shadow of Cold Mountain, has become a favorite.

Sunburst still sells traditional trout delicacies—smoked trout, marinated trout, trout fillets, trout burgers, trout dip. Locals can even buy trout compost, made from the heads, tails, and entrails that Eason can’t sell, layered with sawdust.

“It’s guts, sawdust, guts, sawdust, guts,” Eason says. “And it’s the most fabulous fertilizer ever.”

But it’s the eggs of Sunburst’s trout that are stealing the sturgeon’s spotlight. And no wonder. The nimble trout takes just over two years to reach maturity in the waters of Lake Logan, while the lumbering sturgeon can spend at least 15 swimming the Caspian Sea. The trout’s eggs are cheerful, gold gems to the sturgeon’s sophisticated gray pearls. They are crisp and mild versus rich and fishy. And they are $8 an ounce versus $60. Diners can find them at posh New York eateries including Oceania, rm, and L’Absinthe. Or order them directly from Sunburst, break out the blinis and the crème fraîche, and help save the sturgeon from their demise.