AN OCTOPUS LOVER’S GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY
by ROBERT SIETSEMA
Eater critic Robert Sietsema rounds up some of New York’s finest octopus dishes.
A decade ago if you’d asked a group of New Yorkers what they thought of octopus, nine out of 10 would have wrinkled up their noses in distaste. But lately the brainy cephalopod has swum its way into the culinary spotlight. While your best bet for acquiring octopuses used to be limited to Greek and Japanese restaurants, modern bistros all over town are now serving it. In fact, the creature currently finds itself among the city’s most popular apps.
Identified taxonomically as mollusks of the Octopoda order, octopuses (or more stiltedly, octopi) are represented by over 300 species, with a range that circles the globe. With eight paired arms (though two may be more accurately described as legs), the cephalopod has a beak for biting and eating, and an elaborate defense system that involves fast locomotion, squirted ink, and the ability to assume camouflage colors. Some live in reefs; some dwell on the ocean floor. Other random facts: they have three hearts, no internal skeleton, and a long-term memory. For millennia octopus has been a prominent foodstuff, mainly around the Mediterranean and in the Far East.
While octopus used to be a relatively inexpensive commodity, a declining catch over the last few decades has led it to be almost a luxury seafood. Servings have shrunk as a result, though the animal is not considered endangered in a majority of its habitats. Here is a handy guide to the eight-armed benthic invertebrate as found in area restaurants. We can’t guarantee that it’s currently on the menu at these places, so call ahead to confirm. A few examples have been included from shuttered restaurants for the purpose of amazing you with the wide variety of recipes it has figured in during the contemporary octopodic era.
ITALIAN
Sicilians often include octopus in a seafood salad with olives and crunchy celery, but now random modern pizzerias have jumped into the act, since the mollusk makes a nice non-carb prelude to a rather starchy meal.
Marta – Wrapping around the sinuous tentacles and providing verdant crunch, purslane joins creamy white beans in a salad unique to the world of octopusdom at Danny Meyer’s new Roman pizzeria, via chef Nick Anderer. 29 E 29th St, (212) 689-1900
(ORIGINAL ARTICLE)
OCTOPUSDOM
