7th entry - My first taste of Fugu

On 20 Feb 09, I had my first taste of fugu (河豚, 鰒), the infamous Japanese puffer fish that fascinated me ever since I heard that people risk their lives to eat it. Having a penchant for exotic food, I have always believed that it must be quite a thrill to eat fugu - like taking a bungee jump. The meat must be so sweet and delicious that people pay so much and still risk fatal food poisoning to taste the fish.

So, how does fugu taste like? Well, rather bland and rubbery, unfortunately. I was quite disappointed, really. If not for the single drop of sweet plum sauce that accompanied the slab of translucent white meat laid on top of a ball of sushi rice, the fugu sushi was practically flavourless. Even yellowtail (hamachi) or tuna (maguro) had more taste than fugu. The texture is nothing like the "out of this world" sensation that Japanese artistes described of their experience on Japan Hour, shown on Channel News Asia every Saturday evening at 7.30pm and repeated on Sundays at 8am and 1pm.

A recent TV programme Dining with Death on Okto channel that featured the puffer fish and other poisonous fish as delicacies in various cultures, shed some light on why my fugu experience was such a let down. Due to increasing demand for this delicacy, the rare and tastier wild puffer that fishermen caught in the deep sea has been gradually replaced with puffers reared in fish farms across Japan. The taste of farmed fugu is much milder, weakened further by mass production processes - large quantities of the poisonous fish are prepared daily under watchful supervision by trained workers and the processed meat are shipped to various parts of Japan and exported abroad to restaurants such as the one in Singapore.


I'm not convinced that I ate the REAL puffer. Perhaps I should travel to Japan to try their famous fugu kaiseki, where the entire meal consists of various preparations of the fish, including sashimi presented in the shape of a chrysanthamum flower (symbolising death in Japanese culture) and sake with puffer's fin.