The Post in Which I Describe Eating Octopus

Curious about the octopus in Korea, I asked my boss Jay about whether he liked eating raw octopus. His answer was always "yes, it's very good. We should go and eat it with Matthew when he gets back to Korea." Matthew is the owner of the school. So Matthew finally got back to Korea a few weeks ago, and we set a plan. This plan was cancelled and delayed for a week, and the other foreign teacher, Chae, cancelled due to being too afraid to eat octopus, but finally we set out.

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect when we got there. We went to a place with it's own octopus farm so they had some high quality eight tentacled sea creatures. (Actually it's a place with pictures of the octopus with the mortar board on which I liked).

We took off our shoes and sat indian style around the table with a burner in the center. First, we were served a bunch of side dishes while we waited for the octopus to be prepared. Actually I'm pretty sure the only preparation was chopping it into a bunch of pieces. We were brought out a plate of squirming chunks of octopus tentacles, as shown below. I took the picture a little late, there was a lot more on the plate when it was brought out.

I said it looked like a plate filled with a bunch of live worms, and my boss told me "oh, I've tried worms." I said, really? and he replied "just when I was five or something." I didn't care a lot for the raw octopus. Actually, my first bite I tried to chew for a while, then when I swallowed part of it went down my throat and the other part was stuck in my tooth and wouldn't go down. This all happened while my boss was explaining that the younger person always pours for the older person when their glass is empty. They noticed I was looking sick so they allowed me a minute before pouring.

After we finished the plate of raw octopus, they brought us a plastic container filled with about eight live octopus. These were to be placed into the stew which was boiling at the center of the table on the burner. About three were put in at a time, and you could hear the suction cups clinging for dear life to the plastic container as they were scraped off into the death pool.

These were allowed to cook for a few minutes until they turned a nice pink color. Then, they were held by the head with tongs and cut just below the eyes with some scissors. The tentacle parts were then cut into manageable bites with scissors for eating and the head was allowed to cook for longer. The school owner liked to pop the entire head into his mouth without clearing the insides. I tried it too, although my boss didn't like to do it. I really liked the cooked octopus much better than the raw because the texture is just day and night (rubber and seafood). I told Matthew about how I had tried cooked cow intestine in Africa, and he one upped me with a story about how he was served raw cow brain at a business meeting and had to eat it or the deal would be lost.

Overall, it was a good time. I definitely like cooked octopus, but raw not so much. I think it's fairly cruel to cut an animal up with scissors like that. Actually, I kind of want to get an aquarium and keep one as a pet. I told this to my boss and he was like "yeah, and then you'll get hungry one day and eat him." Whatever.