Fish Sh!t

Cebu City, Philippines.

Yesterday I did lunch at a food court in midtown Cebu City, Philippines. There's about 8 Filipino food counters with a wide selection of fast foods. Next to the Pizza Hut counter was Sugbahan Food Counter and that's where I got to try two bizarre seaweeds. In between these seaweeds was another green thing that looked like Japanese "green tea" cold soba noodles. You've probably seen those thin green noodles. But these turned out to be something other than soba. I asked the ladies behind the counter what each of these items were, but they were lazy and annoyed with my obviously silly and tedious questions. They just nodded and yawned when I asked if the green noodle things were noodles or not. So I just ate some as a side dish to the other weird stuff I had here. They tasted and acted like any other noodle.

But later that night ... I stumbled upon a remarkable and life-changing moment of truth about these innocuous green noodle wanna-be's. A truth that will go down as one of the most memorable weird meat moments.

After checking out the fried one-day-old-chicks and a vertical tasting of even younger birds(!), we were at a big shack restaurant watching some wanker croon on his acoustic guitar, and downing San Miguel beer at 25 cents a bottle. I wish the singer was downing beers as fast as us, perhaps his music would sound better. We escaped the music for a quick look at the culinary offerings -- fish in tanks, shelled creatures on ice, various sides. My friend and fearless guide Arnold wasn't quite sure what the English word was for this one delicacy, but he insisted we take a look and try to decipher exactly what they were. After several confirmations with the staff, we concluded these were definately fish feces. These "green noodles" are actually fish poop!



The discussion that took place to determine this would have been just perfect brilliant on video -- a truly comic kodak moment -- but unfortunately I didn't have it with me -- I do have still pics, however. Basically, they were either too polite to say it, or simply forgot all the words we use to describe what comes out of our butts. Fish butts too.

I suggested that perhaps there is no English word for this dish, other than a literal explanation. It's called "Lokot" in the local language, so now you know how to ask for it. I never dreamed of eating fish sh!t, but in the name of weird meat research, we soon had a plate of this crap and another bucket of beer. Besides, I'd already eaten it for lunch and thought it was fine.

The look and taste of the stuff is harmless, so without the knowledge of "what is this?", any timid but naive diner would slurp these up without question. They're (or it's ?) served raw, with a sprinkling of raw onions, maybe some parsley, and a clear, subtle, sweet-savory sauce.



Upon closer inspection, I realized I've seen fish poop like this before -- you know those aquarium fish you see with strings of fish poopoo hanging out their bottoms. Only this was bigger and more plentiful than the stuff in home aquariums. In fact, it was displayed between two enourmous fish heads, freshly decapitated, sitting in their own blood.

Raw fish poop? I wouldn't try this at home, and never without supervision.

* There's been quite a debate in the comments below about whether I was really eating shit or not. So far the most believable and acceptable response is this from Doodz: "It's actually digested seaweed, and it's really shit. It's not from fish, but rather, it's "trepang" shit, otherwise known as sea cucumbers."