Eat fugu

Is there a chance to eat fugu in Moscow?

in november, a group of us tried fugu for the first time at shiki on lower queen anne in seattle. it literally has no taste… completely clean. unsure what i was expecting regarding taste but that was not it.

Seems that there’s ONE restaurant that can legally serve Fugu in the United States that’s semi-close to me. That would be Kaz Sushi Bistro in Washington, D.C…. I’m hopefully going to give them a call and go up there (it’s a few hours away) when I have some spare cash and go try this. :)

Surprisingly tasteless, except for the “innards” on the bottom right. The flesh is in the center, bottom left is the skin. Who knows what the stuff in the bottom-center is, but the sauce was good!

I had this at Morimoto in NYC, and I highly recommend them. According to wikipedia, as of 2003 there are only 17 places in the US that can legally serve fugu, 12 of them are in New York. As far as I could find, the mortality rate due to fugu in the US is zero, but a couple of people were diagnosed with fugu poising a couple of years ago, but they ate fugu that was illegally imported. The mortality rate in Japan is 50 per year. The toxin is a neurotoxin, and NO, there is no antidote, in case you were wondering. Enjoy, and good luck!

I had fugu (blowfish) while in Japan last year. I refused to eat sushi, but I was willing to eat something that had a chance of killing me. I went to a place in Osaka called Jihey.
Sadly, I didn’t like it. It was rubbery and bland. Maybe it was the method in which it was cooked. It was served raw with a certain type of mushroom and I was given this little wooden bowl that had some sort of coals in it, so that I could cook the fugu myself. I liked the experience, I just wish the fugu was better.
If I ever visit Japan again, I will fugu another chance so that I can try it prepared in a different way. Then I can decide whether or not I truly dislike it.

This is the fugu before it was cooked.

The taste is nothing special, but it causes your mouth to go a bit numb and the numbness lasts for several hours.

I went to a fugu banquet with a bunch of co-workers when I worked in Japan. Before then I thought that fugu was mostly about machismo, but man we ate it 6 different ways that were all really tasty. The strangest one was the fugu ovary dish that was kind of like a poached egg, and my favorite dish was one that was a hot pot with fugu cooked in broth.

I asked about fugu deaths, and it turns out that more people die in Japan every year eating mochi (sweet rice cakes) than fugu. According to my friends there are less than 10 fugu deaths a year, and all of them are instances of home-cooking by unliscened cooks (to prepare fugu in a restaurant chefs get certified).

so, my birthday is right around the corner and eating fugu was in the plan. BUT, all that talk about how cute those little blowfish are kind of threw me over the edge. i’m still committed, however, to eating cows and chickens. :) so i’m a big hypocrite… oh well. :)

I’d do it again

This is not as common as some people might think. Once you have eaten part of the fugu sashimi, you will undoubtedly know if you have consumed too much poison. The lips and tongue go almost entirely numb in a similar sensation to tasting cocaine. This is called in popular culture, “The Taste of Death.” If this does not occur in around ten to fifteen seconds, according to some connoisseurs, then the toxin is not present.