Post #6 – Fugu Part 2 (+Video)
I just got back from New York and i had the oppertunity to try FUGU- or poisonous tiger blowfish (what is fugu? See blog #4)
On Christmas day my brother and I ventured to Restaurant Nippon in Manhattan on the corner of Park and 53rd… This place is known as the first sushi bar to ever open in new York, and also has a special FDA license to serve poisonous pufferfish. And so, given the opportunity, on Christmas Day I decided to go risk my life to try this deadly delicacy.. i’m not exactly the world’s greatest christian, so i hoped God wasn’t going to unleash his fury on me on this day….
Asking to be seated at the bar, I immediately I asked to see the fugu menu which prompted a bit of attention from the sushi bar staff…
With an FDA license, it’s gotta be safe,…. right? I was almost certain it would be a good cut, and that I’d survive dinner. I had no doubt in my mind….
So they brought out a plate of fugu sashimi, a bowl of ponzu sauce, some hot sauce, and some greens (I don’t know what kind… they look like thin green onions)
This was gonna be easy… all that would happen is a bit of numbing of the mouth, and it’d be alright..
So, with a final mental reassurance, the fugu met my mouth….
It’s crunchy, almost like chewing that ginger they give you at a sushi bar…. It doesn’t really have much of a taste… and if it did, it’s masked by the sauce
So my brother beside me took his share of the fugu at the same time, and we sat there, anticipating “Novocain-like numbing”
……nothing
Hmm? Time for another piece? We had a couple more pieces of fugu sashimi, and a slight bit of numbing was felt in the mouth.
And then it happened. It hit me out of nowhere and left me wondering….. I felt a strange psychoactive effect, almost like a mental disassociation from my body… I was fully conscious yet somewhat delirious….
The effect wasn’t too powerful, but it was definitely noticeable. Was I psyching myself out? Was this placebo? It had to be.. I was more than sure that the fish I had was good….
I tried to get my mind off of it, and drank a bit of the ice tea in front of me…. Then I looked to my left, at my brother. He had a very familiar smile on his face as he looked at me…. Not a smile of joy, but the smile that says “oh shit, can you believe this is happening?” ….
With a confused smile on my face, I ask “hey kid…. Are you starting to feel something?”
To which he responds laughing, “I think I’m feeling kinda weird”
at this point, I had come to the conclusion that I would be dead within a few minutes
anxiety struck
I began to shiver, and I felt numbness all over my body…
There was a strange prickly numbness radiating down into my body from my mouth to the ends of my fingertips…
My face was flushed and I was sweating…. I look to my left as my brother is unbuttoning a couple buttons of his shirt to allow some airflow ..
A psychoactive hangover-like disassociated feeling took over my consciousness as I sat there, delirious, wondering whether or not we had eaten a poorly cut pufferfish… was I dying? Was this the end?
But then again, I thought of the statistics, and about the FDA license these guys had…. There’s no way I had a lethal dose of the poison.. I decided to take the route of Denial….
Was I dying? Of course not… hah, there is nothing worse than near-death anxiety… I had to get my mind off of it…. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe….
Or was it?
I wanted to know exactly what the symptoms were of tetradoxin poisoning were…. I tried to ask the sushi chef, but he didn’t speak a word of English… the waitress serving us had no idea what I was talking about… Was there nobody to reassure me that I’d survive this thing?
We sat and waited…. To get my mind off of the hell I was experiencing, I ordered a couple pieces of safe sushi (namely some toro and halibut)… These were brought out, but tasted like nothing, since I had lost the sense of taste…
About twenty minutes had gone by since I first had the fugu, and I was still alive [what a relief], but I was certain that I had ingested at least a little bit of this poison. I was taking increasingly heavier breaths and feeling weaker by the minute…
We stayed at the sushi bar for another ten minutes and paid the check, leaving behind the rest of the fugu, walking out into the freezing-cold streets of midtown manhattan.
On the walk back to the hotel, some of the effects began to fade, but a hangover-like after effect lingered….
I could not sleep that night. I lay in bed having strange semi-conscious dreams of weird unsolvable puzzles, spontaneously twitching every hour or so..
the next day I had a slight hangover for a large portion of the day, but that too went away.
It sucked. But I survived
Now that I look back, I’m really glad I had fugu. It was a hell of an experience. I had a non-lethal dose of an lethal neurotoxic poison in my system, and I survived to tell about it.. Whether or not the sushi chef had incorrectly prepared the fish, I won’t really know. I know that the flesh still contains trace amounts of the poison, and the fish I had may have had an unusually high concentration of Tetradoxin.
I’m glad that it’s all over, but I surely do not regret having the fugu…. Given the opportunity, I probably would never do it again, and most certainly I would not recommend fugu to anyone else.
But then again, if you feel daring, it may just be worth it.
x
here’s the little fucker… alive
…and dead
poisoned and delirious in front the restaurant
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and the video:
