The smell of fish (and 830 kinds of other seafood) might turn you down but it’s well worth it. I missed the tuna auction in Tokyo the week before so I definitely wanted to check out the Noryangjin fish market in Seoul. What follows is a struggle with an octopus, beware of the video!
If you like to taste some fresh seafood then this is the place to be. My Korean is limited to “hi” and “where is the bathroom”, so I just pointed in the direction of some sea creatures that looked interesting. I mange to pick an octopus and some crabs to have at least something familiar on my plate.
So there I stand looking lost with my plastic bag with a squirming octopus. No worries the shop owner makes some gestures pointing in the other direction. Seconds later a random person shows up and tells me to follow him, my Korean understanding is improving. No actually he yelled “my restaurant” a couple of times.
So far so good, I sit on the floor in a restaurant holding a plastic bag with an octopus that wants to escape. Now I have to decide whether the octopus should be cooked or served raw (Sannakji).
There goes the poor octopus on the cutting board chopped into small pieces. I know this sounds harsh but the animal is death by now. There are other forms of Ikizukuri (sashimi made from live seafood) where the animal is eaten while it is still alive.
In less than 30 seconds the squirming octopus is chopped and served on a plate with some sesame seasoning. Hold on it still squirming, what went wrong? Well although the octopus passed away the nerves and the suckers are still active. Animation is key here, the more your food moves or flips over your side dishes, the fresher it is.
This is weird and I even feel a bit sick looking at this plate full of moving tentacles. I reach out with chopsticks to try and grab one of the pieces. Let’s just try a quick bite to get it over with. The active suckers make it a real challenge, the tentacles stick to the plate like they want to express their fear of being eaten. It feels like a stuffed animal crane game. You have to learn the physics behind it to win. When I finally grab a tentacle and dip it in the sesame oil, another surprise. The oil is like an animation enhancer, more squirming,
Time to chew fast because the suckers try to stick to my tongue. To prevent you from chocking it’s a good idea to chew well, you don’t want those tentacles sucked on to your throat.
Half an hour later the chaotic mass is still moving on my plate, this is the definitely the weirdest food I ever had. It doesn’t have much taste and it’s very chewy, feeling the moving and sucking octopus tentacles in your mouth is what this experience is about.
