Octopus Beak

I've been writing about weird meat for a while now, so I get quite excited when I run into a new weird food that I've never seen before -- especially when I have no idea what it is...

I was at the Huang Long seafood market in the city of Hangzhou, which is one of my favorite places to eat in China. There are about 50 stalls all with live and fresh seafood of all sorts, and aggressive hawkers try to lure you in to their sections. Some of them chase you with giant live crabs, others amuse you by doing vulgar things with phallic sea creatures.



I like to check out all the freaky ocean critters before setting down to eat. Most of the stuff I've seen and eaten before, but this time I ran across a display of something I just had no idea what it could be...



Is that a bird head? A bear claw? A shark tooth?

It turns out to be an octopus beak. I'd forgotten they had beaks like this, hidden under their rubbery blubbery head. Looks strong and sharp and curved like a parrot's beak.



You hold it and eat the flesh around the beak. I suppose we could call it octopus "neck". The meat was dried like a jerky, and kind of reminded me of eating a duck or chicken neck. I'm sure you'd like it.

Octopuses, I mean octopi, er, (what is the plural of octopus anyway?) are crazy crazy creatures. Here's a nice page about them here, with more photos of their beaks. Here's an octopus beak in a museum exhibit -- looks like a bird head eh!

And then finally, this rather disturbing image of a giant squid beak getting fingered:


Image from Smithsonian