Live octopus

That was the speciality at the restaurant I went to with a group of students and staff last night to celebrate the end of the semester.

The octopuses (octopi?) were brought to the table on small skillets filled with a reddish sauce and stewed veggies and covered with a glass dome. The skillets were then placed on top of lit burners on the tables. It took a few minutes for the creatures to stop wriggling under the glass. Then, voila--dead octopus! The waitress then came around with a big pair of serrated scissors and cut them into bite-sized pieces.

One of the students asked the waitress to take the skillet from the burner directly in front of me back and remove the octopus, explaining something about my vegetarianism. At first the waitress just took a dish towel and placed it over the glass so I wouldn't see the octopus, which made everyone laugh. But my student insisted, so the waitress took back that skillet and moved the octopus to another one. Fortunately, she did this without dangling the living thing in front of my face.

I apologized to my table mates and explained that I didn't want to offend the restaurant owner or insult their culture. But it was just too horrifying to me to watch the octopus die a few inches from my face. They reassured me that nobody was offended and that, on the contrary, they hadn't wanted t upset or offend me. Koreans are so polite.

Fortunately, I'd had a sandwich earlier in the day, and there were enough side dishes to keep me from getting hungry while everyone else used their chopsticks to pick up the fresh tentacles and pop them in their mouths.

One American professor had brought his kids along. The little girl, maybe four or five years old, didn't want to watch the slithering octopus either, and hid her head in her dad's shirt. We decided she an I were kindred spirits. But, once the food was ready, she ate along with everyone else. Her mom's Korean.