Random Animals That Are Served as Food... Alive! (12 items)

• 

  (#1) Octopus

  • Animal

  It's common in South Korea to be served chopped up octopuses whose little arms are squirming around on the plate when you eat them. Fun! But that's not really eating a creature alive, y'know? Chopping them up kills them eventually, if you wait long enough. The real fun begins when you eat them whole and alive, and they try to climb out of your mouth.
  
• 

  (#2) Ant

  • Animal

  During the 2012 Olympics in London, a Danish chef at Claridge's served live, chilled ants with creme fraiche on cabbage leaves in a pot filled with "edible soil." The ants tasted like lemongrass, apparently, if you could catch them.
• 

  (#3) Lobster

  • Family

  This one is particularly gruesome: a Houston restaurant will serve you "belly sashimi" right out of a lobster's belly... while the lobster is still alive, staring at you. One critic called the dish - which, let's remember, entails eating a lobster's stomach while it wiggles its claws at you - "utterly delicious."
  
• 

  (#4) Maggots

  "Casu Marzu" is not a character in the newest Star Wars movie: it's a Sardinian cheese full of live maggots. Flies lay their eggs in the cheese, the maggots eat the cheese, and we eat the maggots, the cheese, and the maggot poop. This combination somehow ends up tasting like gorgonzola and black pepper, according to the brave souls who can stomach the stuff.
• 

  (#5) Fish

  Ikizukuri is a Japanese dish where the fish is still alive while you eat it. Talk about fresh! The head is left alive (complete with gill movements) while the rest of the fish is filleted or - more horrifically, somehow - deep-fried.

  
  
• 

  (#6) Frog

  • Animal

  If you want to eat food so fresh that it's blinking at you, head to Tokyo's Asadachi restaurant, where you can find frog sashimi. A chef serves up a sliced-up frog on a bed of ice while it is still technically alive and wriggling around. You can see its heart beating while you eat the rest of it.
   
   
• 

  (#7) Shrimp

  If you're looking to eat something both alive and almost lethally intoxicated, head to Shangai. So-called "drunken shrimp" is a dish that consists of live shrimp "marinated" in booze called baijiu and then eaten while still alive and insanely drunk. Extra gross points: the drunken shrimp get thirsty, so they drink up the sauce on the plate, essentially seasoning themselves!

  
  
• 

  (#8) Cockroach

  • Order

  While not actually served in a restaurant, cockroaches are sometimes consumed while alive in extreme eating competitions such as one in Florida in 2012 that turned deadly. The "winner" of the competition ate dozens of live cockroaches (among other things) and then later choked to death on them. Witnesses say he had to cover his mouth with his hands to keep them from crawling out.
   
   
• 

  (#9) Eel

  • Order

  Most food doesn't jiggle around in your tummy when you eat it. Typically, boring old everyday food just kind of sits in your stomach like a dullard. But not live eels! One famous chef reports that while in Japan he ate live eel doused in vinegar and sake, which made the eels dance on the plate and then later in his belly, after he swallowed them whole.

  
  
• 

  (#10) Oyster

  • Animal

  You might already know that oysters are still alive after they're shucked, but it's worth noting that there is a common dish out there that is served alive. Who knows? Maybe someday eating live maggots will seem as common as eating live oysters.
   
   
• 

  (#11) Grubs

  Flavor-wise, you could do a whole lot worse than a witchetty grub if you're looking to start eating food that is still alive. The flavor of this 7-centimeter-long Australian insect is said to be like fried egg and nuts. Not bad!
   
   
• 

  (#12) Sea urchin

  • Class

  Not everyone eats sea urchins fast enough after plucking them out of the ocean to technically eat them while they're still alive, but aficionados say they're better this way (otherwise you're just eating uni like you would find in a sushi restaurant). The only edible part of a sea urchin? Its sexual organs.
   
   
   

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking