What has 8 legs and might kill you if you eat it?

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A live octopus!

That's why you have to chew chew chew it up before you swallow. Otherwise the suction cups might stick to your throat and choke you. I heard that 2% of people that eat it die! Not really sure if that's an old wives tale or not, but I was careful, rest assured.

Brittany, Karen, Chamil, Rick and I went down to Jagalchi (fish wharf) to find some live octopus last Friday. Nothing like a little danger to jump start your weekend. In Korean, it is called Sannakji. We found a little restaurant right off the water where we pantomimed awkwardly for a few minutes with a fisherwoman. She used a net and a claw to peel two squiggly, squirmy octopuses (octopi?) from their tank. We sat at our table and then our the top was decorated with banchan, or the many side dishes, and the cut up pieces of octopus, which were still moving. We had a dipping sauce of sesame and sesame oil.

The taste was, well, fishy, and chewy, and unflavored, except for the sesame oil. It wasn't bad, but it was an odd taste you had to get used to at first. Very unique texture. Rick was an adamant hater; I would eat it again, but I probably won't start craving it. Apparently it is not unusual for Korean to eat it - most of my students have had it numerous times. I ate about 7 or 8 pieces. We also had an "octopus" shot, which is a shot of soju with a piece of octopus in it for a nice surprise! Then we decided to have a race, each of us betting on our chosen tentacle. They kind of wiggled around for a while on the plate, but didn't appear to be going anywhere until Rick's, who was smart and chose a big'un, eventually dominated all of ours by sliding 2 centimeters ahead. It sure was a close one!

After annoying the patrons a little bit longer with our excessive video and picture-taking, we called it a night and headed back to the Beer Mart to wash out our mouths. Yeah octopus!! Please enjoy this little video I created, an homage to our friend, the octopus.


Comments

Unknown said…
Two posts with use of metric measurements? I don't know what a centimeter is...I don't know what a meter is! You stick with American measurements and be proud of it!
January 26, 2009 at 11:49 AM
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