Eating Live Octopus in Korea (Sannakji)

Eating Live Octopus in Korea (Sannakji)

Traveling is all about exploring, experiencing and indulging. We visit places to explore, sometimes to experience the culture and most important of all is to indulge the local food.

Food is always part of the experience of traveling such as enjoying Bebek and Babi Guling in Bali, Tom Yam in Thailand, live prawns in Japan and Pho in Vietnam.

While traveling in South Korea last year, I finally tasted their popular Sannakji or live octopus. You might see many videos of people eating the whole live octopus but that is not the correct way of indulging live octopus according to my Korean friends. If you try to eat the whole live octopus, the chances the tentacles stick in your throat is very high and you might choked to death. That’s why not everything you watch on TV or Internet might be true.

The proper way of enjoying live octopus or Sannakji is by chopping the live octopus to small pieces. Then it will be sprinkled it with sesame oil and time to eat it.

The parts of the octopus are still moving and it is best to use the chopsticks to pick it up and eat it.

You can feel it moving in your mouth. The texture of the octopus is soft and you get the fragrant scent of the sesame oil. I didn’t get the tentacles stuck in my throat but I will prefer to have it with a glass of cognac or whisky or shochu!

I had it in Sorae Fish Market in Incheon and the trip was sponsored by Samsung Malaysia for the Incheon Asian Games 2014.  If you happen to be in Korea, you should it give it a try.