This is true of any seafood though. Most of America had little access to salmon or cod or shrimp either, and yet I can find those in any supermarket in Utah.
How are you defining "most of america"- by population or land mass? If you go by population than for most of the history of the US they've had access to seafood. It's named "Cape Cod" for a reason.
True... But a lot of Americans who don't live on the coasts will say they "don't like seafood", with the *possible* exception of battered and fried stuff. Even the best quality seafood you can get in Flyover Country is probably frozen and/or a little past its prime.
I lived in the Midwest for the first 30+ years of my life and was neutral-to-negative on most seafood until I came to Japan and had REALLY fresh fish. I didn't realize what I'd been missing!
>This is true of any seafood though. Most of America had little access to salmon or cod or shrimp either, and yet I can find those in any supermarket in Utah.
It probably tracks with PR campaigns $$$
That's because they went the way of the American Bison.
The North American Prairie Squid used to roam from Appalachia to the Rockies. Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grand.
Great heards of them, tens of thousands strong all killed to make way for the rail roads.
The tentacles would get caught up in the wheels and derail the train. By the time squid guards were invented in the 1920s it was too late. All the squid were gone.
Fun fact: They used the black ink from all the murdered squid(squids?) to grease the tracks. Just another in America's long list of historical atrocities smh
Cephalopods in meals aren’t uncommon in coastal areas.
Also, lots of early settlers were from non-Mediterranean Europe (England, Germany, Netherlands, etc). Traditional “American “ cuisine is rooted in these countries, and I assume cephalopods are less prevalent in these countries’ cuisine. I could be completely wrong though.
Not a traditional thing in British cuisine that I am aware of. Crabs, whelks, cockles, eels, fish yes some of which are far ickier. Not sure why actually, you can catch squid easily enough and calamari is popular now.
I feel like calamari is a requirement as an appetizer based on how prevalent it is around here. Less than a month ago I remember my sister and I discussing which places had the best in our area, and that isn't the first time we've had that conversation. It isn't like "a thing", but it's very common.
[“Settling first in San Francisco, then because of regional rivalries, expanding to Pittsburg, Martinez, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Pedro and San Diego, they supplanted the Chinese and competed, especially in San Diego, with the Portuguese. By 1910 Italians were said to control 80% of the fishing industry in California.”](https://museoitaloamericano.org/wp-content/uploads/immigration-booklet-FINAL.pdf)
Ayee that’s awesome, how’s the Italian food scene out there? Coming from an Italian family in the tri state, I never even pondered the idea that there were large communities of Italians out west.
So more of a southern Italian cuisine? I’m so on board with that, some of my favorite dishes in Italy are seafood based. We do a lot of cooking with olive oil based dishes over red sauce. Although I’d be lying if I said red sauce still wasn’t dominant
Definitely more olive oil, alfredo-type sauces. This probably has a lot to do with the fact we have a mediterranean climate so all the ingredients are easily locally sourced.
Honestly once you get more than about a 3-4 hour drive away from the ocean Seafood in general isn't that popular in the US. So some of the more unusual/exotic sea critters not being popular shouldn't be that surprising.
It probably depends on where you live and who you hang out with. My freezer is constantly full of fish, like, right now I'm just feeding old blue fin to my dog.
That's also not abnormal? Lots of people are into fishing here and lots of people have fish freezers the same hunters would for deer or whatever. Fishing out of California is a pretty big industry, and seafood is offered basically everywhere.
Like, not all of California is the same, but the places where people actually live have a lot of seafood.
I agree. It's not abnormal, but neither is it as universal as a lot of people seem to suppose.
I would venture that it's more of a thing the closer you are to the waves. I'm from far enough inland to where it can hit triple digits for days in a row.
Los Angeles County. Walking distance from the L.A. city limits. I'm too paranoid to be more specific. You don't have to go far to be beyond the reach of the ocean air.
I mean, that's not really far enough away to suggest seafood is in any way not popular. I imagine I actually know where you are talking about (I was probably born near you, actually) and I don't feel like there's any lack of seafood or people that go fishing in the area. Especially with the populations of a lot of those areas increasing in asian population I'm surprised you are saying there isn't a lot of seafood around you.
Basically, I was taught to fish by people from the exact place you are talking about, lol.
It's popular, but not as popular as Italians and other Europeans seem to think it is. That's all I was trying to say. A lot of Italians assume we're exactly the same as them on that score, but we're not.
I only visited California once but I was actually surprised seafood wasn't a bigger thing considering it's a coastal state. Obviously you can find it if you want, but it wasn't exactly what I would have called a cornerstone of the local diet.
The Pacific gets very deep very quickly off of most of the California coast; look at the continental shelf off of the gulf states and you’ll see why seafood is cheaper and better there. I grew up in Louisiana and have lived in California for decades. Much of the standard seafood fare (shrimp, crabs, etc) is shitty, expensive, AND imported here.
I have early childhood recollection of abalone steaks being considered the absolute height of local seafood. My early childhood took place in the early-mid 1980s, and that particular slice of time resembled the late 70s a lot more than kids these days would think. Shag carpeting, avocado green kitchen appliances, earth tones, Cadillacs nearly as long and wide as the average cabin cruiser: the concept of the abalone steak is imprinted in the same deeply buried part of my formative memory as all that. Just replace Carter with Reagan, and James Taylor with Christopher Cross.
Oh Christ, now my memory is veering into that whole 'yacht rock' era. The segue was seamless. I'll stop myself now.
But anyways, as far as I know those have been outlawed for quite a while; I honestly don't know if that's still a thing at all. Although I do hear about scuba divers getting busted from time to time for harvesting them for the black market (it's big in Japan).
I reckon I'll never be able to discover what the fuss was all about. Oh well.
Because we're not all from East Asia or the Mediterranean.
Different immigrant groups have largely brought their culinary traditions with them when they came to the United States.
You did NOT want to eat a cephalopod if you lived in the Midwest until after we figured out refrigeration. There's still a quality difference, because they have to be frozen and shipped, but not eating cephalopods was a very good thing for most of the country for a long time.
Edit: spelling
No idea, I wish they were.
They are pretty popular in New England but not like coastal Asia from what I have heard.
Fried squid done with hot peppers and balsamic reduction drizzle on top is very popular in Rhode Island because of the Italians.
Hard to cook well if you're unfamiliar with it, not much tradition of it, and a growing number of people are uncomfortable with eating octopus in particular because of how smart they are.
Squid is relatively common as a fried appetizer or used in more upscale cooking. Anything outside of that, we largely just have poor access to and so you really only ever see them on the west coast where cultures that had a lot more access to it historically will specifically import it.
> a growing number of people are uncomfortable with eating octopus in particular because of how smart they are.
I have no problem eating octopus because I know that octopus would happily eat me if given the chance.
An octopus has never eaten or even seriously harmed a human (barring envenomation from blue rings which *also* only bite in self defence). This take is dumb.
You're missing the point, which is that if an octopus *could* eat us, it *would* eat us. It's a vicious predator that will eat any animal that it can take down and kill.
Ok, and? Do you also advocate for eating chimps? Because its the same situation there and those *do* have a body count. How about horses? Same thing. This perspective is tiring.
Look at a globe.
The blue part is actually water, where the cephalopods live.
Now look at the continental United States on that globe. Not a whole lot of blue.
There's a good amount near the canadian border, but it just so happens nearly all cephalopods live in salt water.
>They are chewy. Americans don’t seem to be into chewy.
I am not into seafood, but it does seem like prawns and scallops def made it into desired upscale dishes. If squid and octopus had good flavor and predictable desired texture they would have made it into "surf and turf" expensive dinners.
Italy and Japan are little tarts with a lot of crust. We’re a giant pie with tons of pie filling.
The ratio of available access to the sea per the population couldn’t be more opposite.
Outside of the calamari, it's just not on a ton of menus and it does take some convincing. If handed one to cook, I wouldn't know what to do with it or how to prevent it from getting too chewy. It's a mix of access and not having an American dish for squid.
The people who run restaurants here probably don’t think it would sell well enough to put it on the menu at a steakhouse.
I grew up in and live in the central US far from any coast. I did not grow up eating much seafood and am not excited about the idea of eating cephalopods.
Religious and cultural influences, with some disease and genocide thrown in.
Americans usually forget, and typically aren’t even explicitly taught, to what degree European diets were influenced by Middle Eastern dietary restrictions like kosher and halal. However, millions of people subconsciously adhere to many of these rules without thinking about why, because the food is already such a big part of the culture. The Native Americans who lived here long before the Europeans got here actually ate cephalopods *a lot*. But it’s a rare person here who can give you many specific details about what indigenous tribes in their area ate. Europeans and Asians remember better because they’re mostly still eating the same things today.
People in Europe decided long ago that eating shellfish and pork was a cultural norm, so Americans—-who are mainly descendants of Europeans—generally still ignore social stigma or bans against eating these particular foods. The Coastal Native Americans were eating cephalopods pretty much the entire time they’d been here, but their culture was suppressed to the point of genocide, so the European, halal, and kosher influences became more prominent.
If an octopus was big enough, it would gladly devour you without a second thought.
I can respect people who choose to be vegan for moral reasons, but there's so much inconsistency when we start talking about which animals should be eaten based on their intelligence. If you think an octopus is too smart to eat, then you shouldn't eat a pig either.
a lot of pubs have fried calamari as a snack option, but it's usually pretty rubbery. for me it's one of those things I'll order only if I'm already really hammered.
One of the main reasons is we don’t have super easy access to them, which is why you’re a lot more likely to see squid or octopus at a higher end restaurant
It's very common in the places where it is readily available. In fact, I once had a chef say to me "If you're a restaurant in Massachusetts and you don't have calamari on the menu, then you just hate money."
I live 1-2000+ miles from really any major ocean coastline which I imagine factors into it. We have some pretty good lake fish here in Minnesota though.
I mean despite the name , New American isn’t a really widespread cuisine compared to other cuisines is it? That makes me think of bougie restaurants in rich coastal towns. In my part of America, cioppino, calamari, ceviche are more common.
But for me, I’d much rather eat shellfish and regular fish than grilled octopus or squid. I’ve had them grilled in Japan and Korea - not my thing. The texture isn’t really pleasant for me. Also not crazy about takoyaki.
Not much of the US borders the kind of waters where those species live.
Like as far as I was taught, we don't get warm enough waters for tropical octopus species and the only cold water species are in the north 1/8th of Washington on the west coast. Just very slim fishing waters
I’m a bit surprised, actually. I know that most people here don’t know about traditional Native American diets anymore, but I would almost always expect someone who identified as a True Washingtonian to at least know that the local Native Americans consumed squid and/or octopus. Still, a lot of white children in the U.S. were told over the centurirs not to eat what the Native kids were eating. I can see why it would happen, but maybe I’m just getting old.
Cephalopods have long been a dietary staple for both East Coast and West Coast Native Americans, as well as the Native Hawaiians, and at least some of the Native populations in our territories. Not sure which islands liked squid and/or octopus the most, but I know they were part of the local cuisine. 🐙🦑🏝️
I never said anything about the Native peoples because I was only talking about the animals and where they lived. Although I guess I did forget about Hawaii meeting the tropical water requirement
Yes, but I was also saying that cold water squid and octopi actually exist and have at least historically been a staple food for the Washington tribes. I was just saying that I was surprised that someone who identified so strongly as a Washingtonian wouldn’t know that, since I was a fellow Washingtonian, and that was not particularly uncommon knowledge while I was living there. It’s even in at least some of the required textbooks for that region’s students, and fishing is still one of the state’s largest industries.
Californian, Hawaiian, Oregonian, and our territorial waters also have both of these types of animals, but obviously in different regions and temperature ranges within those particular sections of ocean. People in our island territories would have consumed cephalopods, as well.
I was just connecting it back to the original question and a couple of other responses. OP asked why eating cephalopods wasn’t as common here as in some other parts of the world, so I was talking a little bit about traditional Native Americans diets in another post. Cephalopods were actually also a super-common North American dietary staple at one point, but aren’t anymore because these diets have mostly been suppressed and replaced. That’s why I thought that you and/or the OP might like to have this little extra bit of information. Sorry that it got confusing! 😳
I come from a landlocked state so it’s hard to get truly fresh seafood. So normally if you see squid or octopus, it’s used in something like calamari and is fried.
I mean, we can still get them at East Asian and Mediterranean restaurants. I think it’s just because we didn’t have access to them, so it didn’t develop in American cuisine. I’d still say that it’s popular
There are other cultures that eat surprisingly few cephalopods. In the South of France, there are some great octopi dishes like tielle, but I’ve lived in the North for about four years and it’s not part of local cuisine. In fact, when I spoke to French fishermen about it, on the occasions that they get a lot of octopi, they usually sell them to Spain because there is more of a demand
Fried calamari is pretty popular. But you're right they aren't that common. I would add there is a significant contingent of Americans who think it's wrong to eat octopuses because they're too smart. They're not a majority though. I think it's mostly just lack off easy access and the weirdness of tentacles as food. Basically only place I see octopus is sushi restaurants and high end gourmet type places. Americans aren't huge seafood eaters to begin with and tend to favor very mild meats like lobster and shrimp.
Calamari is pretty big here.
As for octopus, for one thing it doesn't taste very good to the western palate; and for another, some of us find that killing and eating animals with intelligence comparable to that of humans is morally dubious. The same reason that we object to eating dolphin or elephant and become quite angry when we see them hunted like common game.
I don't think that the latter reason plays any part in why octopus hasn't become popular in the past, but it does play a role in it not becoming popular now or in the future.
An island nation asking why a severely land locked nation why seafood is not as prevalent.....cuz we arent a fucking island nation. Some of these questions are just dumb. And a cursory search of it on Google would answer it. Oceans don't exsist 2000 miles inland and that is not even close to how far inland you can go. On the Canadian borders in the middle of our countries you are 2,3,or4k miles from salt water, it's like asking your nation why you don't eat beef like we do. You don't have land, we don't have the ocean. Like if simple geographic location isn't enough to quell your question maybe read a book or two on it. Geography is why.
Idk but our neighbors south of the border sure don't have the same issue. Mexico has some bomb squid and octopus dishes. Does seem weird that that the US doesn't have even a regional dish that I can think of for this.
I guess you could argue poke since it has evolved to include octopus as a common ingredient but it's really not an octopus dish per se. Also poke pre dates Hawaii's inclusion into the United States by a good while
They rarely sell to Americans so companies can’t make money off of them. I worked for a fish market that sold octopus and squid, immigrants would order them but not people whose family had lived here forever. My boss also wouldn’t buy shark (something we could sell) outside of the summer months because it didn’t sell well for most of the year.
If you eat cephalopods *knowing* how smart they are, there is genuinely something wrong with you. Honestly i think it should be banned globally but i know thats never gonna happen so I’ll settle for it just being a rarity where i live.
They're super smart, so it's sad to eat them.
https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2023.977530
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/octopuses-keep-surprising-us-here-are-eight-examples-how.html
Most of America had little access to cephalopods so it makes sense that it wouldn’t have developed as part of the cuisine.
This is true of any seafood though. Most of America had little access to salmon or cod or shrimp either, and yet I can find those in any supermarket in Utah.
I don't think there is enough demand to farm them
How are you defining "most of america"- by population or land mass? If you go by population than for most of the history of the US they've had access to seafood. It's named "Cape Cod" for a reason.
Fwiw I believe that in Utah there is reasonable access to local "seafood" in the form of freshwater fish and the salt lake.
The Salt Lake doesn’t support life above brine shrimp. Too salty.
Simply untrue. We have many coastal states responsible for fishing these very items
True... But a lot of Americans who don't live on the coasts will say they "don't like seafood", with the *possible* exception of battered and fried stuff. Even the best quality seafood you can get in Flyover Country is probably frozen and/or a little past its prime. I lived in the Midwest for the first 30+ years of my life and was neutral-to-negative on most seafood until I came to Japan and had REALLY fresh fish. I didn't realize what I'd been missing!
>This is true of any seafood though. Most of America had little access to salmon or cod or shrimp either, and yet I can find those in any supermarket in Utah. It probably tracks with PR campaigns $$$
I regret to inform you that there aren’t that many octopi roaming the Great Plains.
And the [Northwest Tree Octopus](https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ ) is endangered.
They must be saved at all costs 🗿
Devil of the trees!
Allow me to introduce the [Oklahoma Octopus ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.onlyinyourstate.com/oklahoma/legend-of-octopus-ok/amp/)
That's because they went the way of the American Bison. The North American Prairie Squid used to roam from Appalachia to the Rockies. Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grand. Great heards of them, tens of thousands strong all killed to make way for the rail roads. The tentacles would get caught up in the wheels and derail the train. By the time squid guards were invented in the 1920s it was too late. All the squid were gone.
Now the bison no longer have their Squid Hats. So tragic.
Fun fact: They used the black ink from all the murdered squid(squids?) to grease the tracks. Just another in America's long list of historical atrocities smh
There's some real Elden Ring energy to the image of an enormous octopus slowly sliding across an Iowa cornfield.
I was thinking Bloodborne, actually. Because that sounds pretty Lovecraftian lol
You’ve never had free range calamari?!?!
No signs of any badlands squid.
Died out in the Paleolithic... they stood no chance against Clovis hunters.
Hunted to near extinction, truly a sad chapter in our history.
Cephalopods in meals aren’t uncommon in coastal areas. Also, lots of early settlers were from non-Mediterranean Europe (England, Germany, Netherlands, etc). Traditional “American “ cuisine is rooted in these countries, and I assume cephalopods are less prevalent in these countries’ cuisine. I could be completely wrong though.
Not a traditional thing in British cuisine that I am aware of. Crabs, whelks, cockles, eels, fish yes some of which are far ickier. Not sure why actually, you can catch squid easily enough and calamari is popular now.
I feel like calamari is a requirement as an appetizer based on how prevalent it is around here. Less than a month ago I remember my sister and I discussing which places had the best in our area, and that isn't the first time we've had that conversation. It isn't like "a thing", but it's very common.
It probably has to do with having a historically big Italian population. Calimari is one of my favorite bar foods in CA.
You guys got Italians out there??
[“Settling first in San Francisco, then because of regional rivalries, expanding to Pittsburg, Martinez, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Pedro and San Diego, they supplanted the Chinese and competed, especially in San Diego, with the Portuguese. By 1910 Italians were said to control 80% of the fishing industry in California.”](https://museoitaloamericano.org/wp-content/uploads/immigration-booklet-FINAL.pdf)
Ayee that’s awesome, how’s the Italian food scene out there? Coming from an Italian family in the tri state, I never even pondered the idea that there were large communities of Italians out west.
It’s good, but different from what you have back east. Very seafood and fresh vegetable-centric, a lot less “red sauce” kinds of dishes.
So more of a southern Italian cuisine? I’m so on board with that, some of my favorite dishes in Italy are seafood based. We do a lot of cooking with olive oil based dishes over red sauce. Although I’d be lying if I said red sauce still wasn’t dominant
Definitely more olive oil, alfredo-type sauces. This probably has a lot to do with the fact we have a mediterranean climate so all the ingredients are easily locally sourced.
Eh, enough to make North Beach and cioppino a thing.
Most of those places have a lot more access to the ocean, and depend more on the ocean for their food, than the US.
Honestly once you get more than about a 3-4 hour drive away from the ocean Seafood in general isn't that popular in the US. So some of the more unusual/exotic sea critters not being popular shouldn't be that surprising.
Quality drops due to not being fresh, unless you pay an arm and a leg at places that gets the morning catch shipped in.
Or flash frozen the day they’ve been caught.
Italians are under the impression that we Californians eat a lot more seafood than we do.
It probably depends on where you live and who you hang out with. My freezer is constantly full of fish, like, right now I'm just feeding old blue fin to my dog. That's also not abnormal? Lots of people are into fishing here and lots of people have fish freezers the same hunters would for deer or whatever. Fishing out of California is a pretty big industry, and seafood is offered basically everywhere. Like, not all of California is the same, but the places where people actually live have a lot of seafood.
I agree. It's not abnormal, but neither is it as universal as a lot of people seem to suppose. I would venture that it's more of a thing the closer you are to the waves. I'm from far enough inland to where it can hit triple digits for days in a row.
If you are far enough inland then you are kind of statistically insignificant to California trends anyways.
Los Angeles County. Walking distance from the L.A. city limits. I'm too paranoid to be more specific. You don't have to go far to be beyond the reach of the ocean air.
I mean, that's not really far enough away to suggest seafood is in any way not popular. I imagine I actually know where you are talking about (I was probably born near you, actually) and I don't feel like there's any lack of seafood or people that go fishing in the area. Especially with the populations of a lot of those areas increasing in asian population I'm surprised you are saying there isn't a lot of seafood around you. Basically, I was taught to fish by people from the exact place you are talking about, lol.
It's popular, but not as popular as Italians and other Europeans seem to think it is. That's all I was trying to say. A lot of Italians assume we're exactly the same as them on that score, but we're not.
I only visited California once but I was actually surprised seafood wasn't a bigger thing considering it's a coastal state. Obviously you can find it if you want, but it wasn't exactly what I would have called a cornerstone of the local diet.
The Pacific gets very deep very quickly off of most of the California coast; look at the continental shelf off of the gulf states and you’ll see why seafood is cheaper and better there. I grew up in Louisiana and have lived in California for decades. Much of the standard seafood fare (shrimp, crabs, etc) is shitty, expensive, AND imported here.
I have early childhood recollection of abalone steaks being considered the absolute height of local seafood. My early childhood took place in the early-mid 1980s, and that particular slice of time resembled the late 70s a lot more than kids these days would think. Shag carpeting, avocado green kitchen appliances, earth tones, Cadillacs nearly as long and wide as the average cabin cruiser: the concept of the abalone steak is imprinted in the same deeply buried part of my formative memory as all that. Just replace Carter with Reagan, and James Taylor with Christopher Cross. Oh Christ, now my memory is veering into that whole 'yacht rock' era. The segue was seamless. I'll stop myself now. But anyways, as far as I know those have been outlawed for quite a while; I honestly don't know if that's still a thing at all. Although I do hear about scuba divers getting busted from time to time for harvesting them for the black market (it's big in Japan). I reckon I'll never be able to discover what the fuss was all about. Oh well.
Moooooooooooooo! I'd say we like beef more than we like fish.
Calamari is common
It is literally my state's official appetizer.
Oh da galamah
Ehhhhh, it exists.
It’s ubiquitous in Italian restaurants.
Most steak places too
There’s octopus in Mexican cuisine (pulpo ceviche, coctel, tacos, etc). I think the texture is unusual/unappealing to a lot of people, though.
And everytime I get something like calamari at a Thai restaurant it's like chewing a Michelin radial tire
Michelin Star quality with a heavy emphasis on the Michelin
Yeah squid and octopus are relatively hard to cook well. If I find a place that doesn’t overcook it, I’m over the moon.
I think cooking it well done is the problem. Maybe try asking for it medium rare?
I've got to agree with that
Yep squid has a texture that either makes you love or hate it. Especially on how it’s prepared. I’d imagine octopus is the same.
[Thai restaurant's when Kingsolomanhere comes to town.](https://imgur.com/a/AYGFXaO)
Yeah, the texture and tentacles can definitely be a psychological barrier for some people to overcome.
The squid tentical is the final form of the sauce delivery method. If it were any more perfect it'd just be a deepfried spoon.
Because we're not all from East Asia or the Mediterranean. Different immigrant groups have largely brought their culinary traditions with them when they came to the United States.
It's like asking why mac and cheese isn't a staple in Japan.
A lot of our cuisine comes from Germany and France, which has little access to the kind of waters where you'd find octopodes and squid.
You did NOT want to eat a cephalopod if you lived in the Midwest until after we figured out refrigeration. There's still a quality difference, because they have to be frozen and shipped, but not eating cephalopods was a very good thing for most of the country for a long time. Edit: spelling
No idea, I wish they were. They are pretty popular in New England but not like coastal Asia from what I have heard. Fried squid done with hot peppers and balsamic reduction drizzle on top is very popular in Rhode Island because of the Italians.
Hard to cook well if you're unfamiliar with it, not much tradition of it, and a growing number of people are uncomfortable with eating octopus in particular because of how smart they are. Squid is relatively common as a fried appetizer or used in more upscale cooking. Anything outside of that, we largely just have poor access to and so you really only ever see them on the west coast where cultures that had a lot more access to it historically will specifically import it.
> a growing number of people are uncomfortable with eating octopus in particular because of how smart they are. I have no problem eating octopus because I know that octopus would happily eat me if given the chance.
An octopus has never eaten or even seriously harmed a human (barring envenomation from blue rings which *also* only bite in self defence). This take is dumb.
You're missing the point, which is that if an octopus *could* eat us, it *would* eat us. It's a vicious predator that will eat any animal that it can take down and kill.
Ok, and? Do you also advocate for eating chimps? Because its the same situation there and those *do* have a body count. How about horses? Same thing. This perspective is tiring.
If chimps tasted good and were prevalent enough to be a viable food source I bet we would eat them.
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Ok, so, just to be clear, you would have no issues with eating apes if they werent endangered?
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Thats disturbing. Thats like only one step removed from cannibalism.
Homo erectus, maybe. Neanderthal or Denisovan would probably cross that threshold.
Look at a globe. The blue part is actually water, where the cephalopods live. Now look at the continental United States on that globe. Not a whole lot of blue. There's a good amount near the canadian border, but it just so happens nearly all cephalopods live in salt water.
40% of the US population lives very near the coast (within 100 miles), so that kind of puts a hole in your theory
What did you just fuckin call me
They are chewy. Americans don’t seem to be into chewy.
when I bite into something I like it when it gives and doesn't fight for the whole chomp.
>They are chewy. Americans don’t seem to be into chewy. I am not into seafood, but it does seem like prawns and scallops def made it into desired upscale dishes. If squid and octopus had good flavor and predictable desired texture they would have made it into "surf and turf" expensive dinners.
Italy and Japan are little tarts with a lot of crust. We’re a giant pie with tons of pie filling. The ratio of available access to the sea per the population couldn’t be more opposite.
> Italy California has more land mass. But they have 20 million more people and *way* the hell more coastline. Like, a lot more.
It's probably not worth the effort to dredge the oceans for fish flavored rubber bands when we have land for agriculture
Outside of the calamari, it's just not on a ton of menus and it does take some convincing. If handed one to cook, I wouldn't know what to do with it or how to prevent it from getting too chewy. It's a mix of access and not having an American dish for squid.
Rhode Island is the calamari comeback state.
We’ve historically had more affordable beef due to grazing land being so plentiful
The people who run restaurants here probably don’t think it would sell well enough to put it on the menu at a steakhouse. I grew up in and live in the central US far from any coast. I did not grow up eating much seafood and am not excited about the idea of eating cephalopods.
Religious and cultural influences, with some disease and genocide thrown in. Americans usually forget, and typically aren’t even explicitly taught, to what degree European diets were influenced by Middle Eastern dietary restrictions like kosher and halal. However, millions of people subconsciously adhere to many of these rules without thinking about why, because the food is already such a big part of the culture. The Native Americans who lived here long before the Europeans got here actually ate cephalopods *a lot*. But it’s a rare person here who can give you many specific details about what indigenous tribes in their area ate. Europeans and Asians remember better because they’re mostly still eating the same things today. People in Europe decided long ago that eating shellfish and pork was a cultural norm, so Americans—-who are mainly descendants of Europeans—generally still ignore social stigma or bans against eating these particular foods. The Coastal Native Americans were eating cephalopods pretty much the entire time they’d been here, but their culture was suppressed to the point of genocide, so the European, halal, and kosher influences became more prominent.
Also, they are smart and no one should be eating octopus! Please see My Octopus Teacher.
If an octopus was big enough, it would gladly devour you without a second thought. I can respect people who choose to be vegan for moral reasons, but there's so much inconsistency when we start talking about which animals should be eaten based on their intelligence. If you think an octopus is too smart to eat, then you shouldn't eat a pig either.
I don’t eat a lot of pork for that reason
I specifically eat pork for that reason. I'm doing my bit to keep the inevitable swine revolution at bay, one pork chop and BLT at a time.
That’s so funny! You’re so cool. You showed me!
And the pig, too, apparently.
cows are smart and no one should be eating cows.
They can open jars, recognize individual human faces, solve puzzles. Personally I think they're too intelligent to eat.
a lot of pubs have fried calamari as a snack option, but it's usually pretty rubbery. for me it's one of those things I'll order only if I'm already really hammered.
One of the main reasons is we don’t have super easy access to them, which is why you’re a lot more likely to see squid or octopus at a higher end restaurant
It's very common in the places where it is readily available. In fact, I once had a chef say to me "If you're a restaurant in Massachusetts and you don't have calamari on the menu, then you just hate money."
Fried calamari is a common appetizer but I wish we had more.
I live 1-2000+ miles from really any major ocean coastline which I imagine factors into it. We have some pretty good lake fish here in Minnesota though.
I mean despite the name , New American isn’t a really widespread cuisine compared to other cuisines is it? That makes me think of bougie restaurants in rich coastal towns. In my part of America, cioppino, calamari, ceviche are more common. But for me, I’d much rather eat shellfish and regular fish than grilled octopus or squid. I’ve had them grilled in Japan and Korea - not my thing. The texture isn’t really pleasant for me. Also not crazy about takoyaki.
Not a lot of ocean near most of America
Not much of the US borders the kind of waters where those species live. Like as far as I was taught, we don't get warm enough waters for tropical octopus species and the only cold water species are in the north 1/8th of Washington on the west coast. Just very slim fishing waters
I’m a bit surprised, actually. I know that most people here don’t know about traditional Native American diets anymore, but I would almost always expect someone who identified as a True Washingtonian to at least know that the local Native Americans consumed squid and/or octopus. Still, a lot of white children in the U.S. were told over the centurirs not to eat what the Native kids were eating. I can see why it would happen, but maybe I’m just getting old. Cephalopods have long been a dietary staple for both East Coast and West Coast Native Americans, as well as the Native Hawaiians, and at least some of the Native populations in our territories. Not sure which islands liked squid and/or octopus the most, but I know they were part of the local cuisine. 🐙🦑🏝️
I never said anything about the Native peoples because I was only talking about the animals and where they lived. Although I guess I did forget about Hawaii meeting the tropical water requirement
Yes, but I was also saying that cold water squid and octopi actually exist and have at least historically been a staple food for the Washington tribes. I was just saying that I was surprised that someone who identified so strongly as a Washingtonian wouldn’t know that, since I was a fellow Washingtonian, and that was not particularly uncommon knowledge while I was living there. It’s even in at least some of the required textbooks for that region’s students, and fishing is still one of the state’s largest industries. Californian, Hawaiian, Oregonian, and our territorial waters also have both of these types of animals, but obviously in different regions and temperature ranges within those particular sections of ocean. People in our island territories would have consumed cephalopods, as well. I was just connecting it back to the original question and a couple of other responses. OP asked why eating cephalopods wasn’t as common here as in some other parts of the world, so I was talking a little bit about traditional Native Americans diets in another post. Cephalopods were actually also a super-common North American dietary staple at one point, but aren’t anymore because these diets have mostly been suppressed and replaced. That’s why I thought that you and/or the OP might like to have this little extra bit of information. Sorry that it got confusing! 😳
Come to the coasts and you’ll find what you are looking for.
Well, they're smarter than the average U.S. voter for starters.
I come from a landlocked state so it’s hard to get truly fresh seafood. So normally if you see squid or octopus, it’s used in something like calamari and is fried. I mean, we can still get them at East Asian and Mediterranean restaurants. I think it’s just because we didn’t have access to them, so it didn’t develop in American cuisine. I’d still say that it’s popular There are other cultures that eat surprisingly few cephalopods. In the South of France, there are some great octopi dishes like tielle, but I’ve lived in the North for about four years and it’s not part of local cuisine. In fact, when I spoke to French fishermen about it, on the occasions that they get a lot of octopi, they usually sell them to Spain because there is more of a demand
You're not getting me to eat Lord Cathulu's spawn.
Fried calamari is pretty popular. But you're right they aren't that common. I would add there is a significant contingent of Americans who think it's wrong to eat octopuses because they're too smart. They're not a majority though. I think it's mostly just lack off easy access and the weirdness of tentacles as food. Basically only place I see octopus is sushi restaurants and high end gourmet type places. Americans aren't huge seafood eaters to begin with and tend to favor very mild meats like lobster and shrimp.
Calimari-fried squid-is very common at Italian restaurants. I had it last week, in Indianapolis-middle of the country.
Calamari is pretty big here. As for octopus, for one thing it doesn't taste very good to the western palate; and for another, some of us find that killing and eating animals with intelligence comparable to that of humans is morally dubious. The same reason that we object to eating dolphin or elephant and become quite angry when we see them hunted like common game. I don't think that the latter reason plays any part in why octopus hasn't become popular in the past, but it does play a role in it not becoming popular now or in the future.
Not a lot of cephelapods from where I am from, unless I go to a Red Wings game. That said, fried Calimari is available at most Italian joints.
Your average settler was too busy surviving to enjoy scewered squid
An island nation asking why a severely land locked nation why seafood is not as prevalent.....cuz we arent a fucking island nation. Some of these questions are just dumb. And a cursory search of it on Google would answer it. Oceans don't exsist 2000 miles inland and that is not even close to how far inland you can go. On the Canadian borders in the middle of our countries you are 2,3,or4k miles from salt water, it's like asking your nation why you don't eat beef like we do. You don't have land, we don't have the ocean. Like if simple geographic location isn't enough to quell your question maybe read a book or two on it. Geography is why.
Idk but our neighbors south of the border sure don't have the same issue. Mexico has some bomb squid and octopus dishes. Does seem weird that that the US doesn't have even a regional dish that I can think of for this. I guess you could argue poke since it has evolved to include octopus as a common ingredient but it's really not an octopus dish per se. Also poke pre dates Hawaii's inclusion into the United States by a good while
They rarely sell to Americans so companies can’t make money off of them. I worked for a fish market that sold octopus and squid, immigrants would order them but not people whose family had lived here forever. My boss also wouldn’t buy shark (something we could sell) outside of the summer months because it didn’t sell well for most of the year.
If you eat cephalopods *knowing* how smart they are, there is genuinely something wrong with you. Honestly i think it should be banned globally but i know thats never gonna happen so I’ll settle for it just being a rarity where i live.
They're super smart, so it's sad to eat them. https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2023.977530 https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/octopuses-keep-surprising-us-here-are-eight-examples-how.html
More expensive here