Confessions of a baby octopus killer, by Christopher St Cavish.

(Watch SH staff become accomplices, and eat their own octopuses here and here.)

They’re all lying to you. The managers, the customers, and your friends who, upon reading this article, may subsequently eat live food. They’ll claim it’s for your health, for reasons of freshness, or worse yet, for the taste. Don’t believe them - eating live food is disgusting. When it doesn’t involve a physical fight to subdue your dinner, it’s full of moral guilt for unnecessarily prolonging the life of your appetizer. I know it too well. In the last month, I’ve taken advantage of intoxicated shrimp (only to eat them), eaten the warm liver of a tiger fish turned into live sashimi and served still breathing, and pried reluctant octopuses off of tables to send them to a squirming death between my teeth.

A lot of things run through your head after an octopus uses its suction cups on the inside of your cheeks, your tongue, and your face. If you’re smart, most of those thoughts will appear in a drunken haze of soju, a slightly sweet, vodka-like Korean spirit. The first is a feeling of victory, disproportionate to the size of your former foe. The second is relief that it’s over, followed by the restoration of your common sense as you wonder, “Why the hell would anyone do this?”

It started easily enough, with taste. The only exception to the rule of general repulsion is at Yue Lai Jiu Jia, a smoky restaurant on Huanghe Lu. Their drunken shrimp, still flicking against the glass jar they’re served in, are delicious. As they arrive at the table, the tiny crustaceans are suffocating in a mixture of rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar. Their meat is faintly sweet, similar to the raw shrimp served at Japanase sushi restaurants, ama ebi. As they jump, they prompt the same dramatic machismo behaviour from their human predators that I’d later see at a table full of much bigger eight-legged cephalopods. The shrimp die quickly, but occasionally I’d open the jar as soon as it arrived, and grab a moving one with my chopsticks. One or two desperately flung themselves out, across the room, and until I heard about sashimi made from live fish, I considered that as close as I wanted to get to living food.

Ikizukuri is the Japanese term for the skilled art of filleting a still-moving fish, and serving it immediately. When a friend a mentioned that he’d had it in Shanghai, I was interested again.

Spring Summer Autumn Winter is an exceptional Japanese restaurant. Their stewed dishes are warming and unfussy, great with the malty Asahi Black beer they carry. The wasabi is grated fresh, a wood board hangs above your sunken table which you hit with a wood mallet to summon the waitress, and they do wonderful things with beef tongue. Nothing about it would suggest that behind the kitchen doors, there are a couple of morally suspect chefs, quietly plucking fish from the tank by the entrance, and filleting them live.

How better to guarantee your fish is as fresh as possible than to serve it at the table, body breathing, heart beating, flesh removed and sliced paper thin, and perhaps a warm liver on the side? Sure, it’s fresh. Sure, it’s a difficult thing to do. But it’s all lost on me when it’s such a cruel process. The fish skeleton continues to breathe, head held in place by a toothpick securing it to a radish. Its eyes are clear and alert. Regardless of the arguments of freshness and taste (for the record, it’s tough and bland), ikizukuri is pitiable, not appetizing.  The only motivation to finish it quickly is knowing that once all of the meat has been eaten, it will be taken back into the kitchen and killed, bones fried or turned into soup and returned to the table. The only redeemable lesson is learning that tiger fish have a rich, fatty liver, similar to monkfish.

Octopuses don’t have livers. Instead, they have three hearts, keen eyesight, and an intelligence argued about by scientists. At the very least, they can open jars, navigate a maze, and demonstrate the ability to learn. Some part of the argument about the extent of their intelligence stems from the fact that they can’t pick up too much when their lives are so short-lived. Most species only survive for a year or two. If they’ve been picked up by the wholesale supplier to He Lin, an anonymous Korean restaurant on Ziteng Lu, their lifespan is dramatically shortened. They go from the tank to the table to your teeth in 60 seconds.
In Korean it’s called sannakji, and gained widespread exposure from the 2003 thriller Old Boy, in which the protagonist rips apart a significantly larger octopus with his teeth, while the arms crawl across his face. In reality, it’s a bit more subdued, but just as disgusting. The small purple invertebrates blink as you watch them, crawl out of their bowl, and grasp on to your beer. The smiling waitresses will pry it off, forcefully jam two chopsticks into its head, like an octopus lollipop, and dip it into a small bowl of sesame oil and salt. Then it’s over to you.

By now, its eight arms are likely flailing, extended to a size much larger than your mouth, and sucking on to anything they come in contact with – your hands, your face, your lips. And then the fight begins. As you chew its head, trying to kill it as quickly as possible, the slippery octopus moves and jerks, filling your mouth like wet, angry rubber. If you’re unlucky, the ink sac might burst, and a thin line of black ink will form on your tightly pursed lips. But you won’t see it. Like sneezing, it’s physically impossible to keep your eyes open through it. You’ll be too busy concentrating on ending its struggle, and then worrying if its dismembered arms are still moving in your stomach. A mix of pride and regret replace the constant gagging.

He Lin offers one variation, a bowl of dismembered legs which still have the ability to writhe and suck, and on both of my visits, the neighboring tables offered a few suggestions. The first told us to bite the head clean off, and then worry about the legs; the second preferred holding the octopus upside-down while clubbing it in the head. But neither could offer a good reason. They floated the usual freshness and virility theories, and a Guangzhou-esque boast of Korean men eating “anything with four legs except a table”. The latter is irrefutable; there’s nothing fresher than octopus trying to escape you, or a denuded fish staring at you while you eat it. The virility is questionable; with all the alcohol required to be able to eat these foods in the first place, wouldn’t they essentially cancel each other out? Their third reason, though, gave them away as the biggest liars of all. “It tasted good.”

Directions

Live shrimp: Yue Lai Jiu Jia
Price: ¥25.
Availability: They’re open 24 hours, but if you’re coming just for this, it’s best to come in the early evening, as they sell out later on.
81 Huanghe Lu, near Fengyang Lu, 6327 1026
黄河路81号, 近奉贤路

Live fish: Spring Summer Autumn Winter
Price: Market price, depending on variety of fish. As a rough guide, expect to pay ¥150-200 per fish.
Availability: As long as there are fish in the tank. 
3/F, Minfang Department Store, 593 Fuxing Lu, near Ruijin Lu, 2402 8111
复兴路593号民防大厦, 近瑞金路.

Live octopus: He Lin
Price: ¥15 per octopus.
Availability: November to February is the high season for eating octopus, and during that time you’ll need to call in advance to reserve.
232 Ziteng Lu, near Qingshan Lu, 3431 3930
紫藤路232号, 近青杉路.