Friday night I ate live octopus. I've been wanting to try it for awhile, but for whatever reason had not. The restaurant was an old Korean spot, in an especially dark and deserted part of Koreatown. I sat at the bar, with the aquarium that houses the dinner behind me.

When you order the octopus, with the recommended Hite beer, it's kind of like eating Korean sashimi anywhere else, in that they bring soy sauce, a jar of wasabi, and chili sauce, and sesame oil with salt. There's also a bunch of small plates-kimchee, peanuts, some sort of potato, apple salad that can't decide if it's sweet or savory. And then there's the octopus, writhing mindlessly around the plate, with some parts inching and inching closer to the edge to escape. I've never struggled more with a meal.

First, there's the task of simply getting the tentacle on your chopstick, which is occassionally more difficult if the tentacle chooses to use its suction cups to stick to the plate. Eventually I learned to pry it off with a spoon. Once you clamp it between the chopsticks, you may dip it in a sauce, at which point it usually falls into the sauce. Once you retrieve it, you hastily take it into your mouth where, once again, it uses its suction cups to slow the process. After a good bit of chewing, you forget about that scene in Old Boy and swallow. And it's actually really good, though to say it tastes remarkably different than dead octopus sashimi would be a stretch. Along the way, I shared a beer with the older gentleman who prepared my octopus, and made plans to bring my wife next time.