After eating almost everything imaginable under the sun during my China years, I moved from inanimate to animate objects in Korea. At the Noryangjin Fish Market in Seoul, dozens of fishmongers offer mysterious creatures of the deep to the public for immediate consumption. I was accompanied by my friend Zeki. As we exited the Noryangjin subway and turned towards the overhead walkway leading to the fish market, Zeki mentioned that I should have cash on hand as they probably do not accept credit cards. "No they don't." confirmed a foreign passerby who appeared out of nowhere for that brief moment as if performing a cameo in a movie.
After careful inspection, we selected a couple of octopi. I had wanted to share one, but Zeki insisted on two. He wanted to make sure that we each got a head. The fishmonger put the octopus in a plastic bag partially filled with water and handed it to me. We walked through a narrow opening between several stalls at one corner of the market and headed into a basic restaurant attached to the fish market. A lady roughly grabbed my octopi. I followed her into the back and watched in stunned silence as she quickly chopped off the tentacles and put the various squirming pieces onto a dish.
I had difficulty picking up the tentacles with the narrow metal chopsticks that Koreans generally utilise. I was accustomed to the better grip provided by the Amazon rainforest worth of disposable wooden chopsticks used by the Chinese. The strong suction cups on the tentacles were not helping matters either, resisting my attempts to pry them loose from the plate. After finally capturing one wiggling tentacle I dropped it into the signature Korean hot sauce. It twirled around by itself until it was fully sauced. The paste made it somewhat tasty as the raw tentacle generated little flavour by itself.
I avoided eating the head as long as possible, but soon the time came to devour it. Zeki warned me that it was too difficult to chew, and that I would have to swallow it whole. I did not want to do that, so I chewed valiantly for ten minutes after wrapping it in lettuce leaf. The head was about one and a half times the size of a poached egg, with a similar texture but much stronger composition. The membrane was not breaking down into something digestible despite my best efforts. My strength began to fade so eventually I had to swallow it as Zeki predicted. Overall, it was quite unappetizing but worth a try once.
*****
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- William Shakespeare`s Hamlet
