A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people lining up — both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles.
Since “The Ramen Boy” launched the limited-edition noodle bowl on Monday last week, declaring in a social media post that it had “finally got this dream ingredient,” more than 100 people have joined a waiting list to dine at the restaurant.
“It is so attractive because of its appearance — it looks very cute,” said the 37-year-old owner of the restaurant, who wanted to be identified only as Hu, as he held up a giant isopod while customers took pictures.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
“As for the cooking method, we use the simplest way, steam, so there is no difficulty to process it,” Hu said.
The restaurant steams the isopod for 10 minutes before adding it to the top of a bowl of ramen with thick chicken and fish broth. Each bowl costs NT$1,480 (US$48).
A customer said the meat tastes like a cross between crab and lobster, with a dense texture and some chewiness.
Giant isopods — a distant cousin of crabs and prawns — are the largest among the thousands of species in the crustacean group, NOAA Ocean Exploration says on its Web site.
They are usually found about 170m to 2,140m deep in the ocean, with 80 percent of them living at a depth of 365m to 730m, Taiwan’s Animal Planet said in a Facebook page.
A Taiwanese expert identified the species as Bathynomus jamesi, discovered near the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙島) in the South China Sea. They are thought to be caught at between 300m to 500m.
Since the ramen launched, some academics have expressed concerns over the potential ecological impact of bottom trawling fishing tactics as well as possible health risks.
However, customers at the restaurant disagree.
“If it’s just a special menu, and the giant isopods were caught unintentionally like the restaurant owner says they were, everyone should try it if they get a chance,” said 34-year-old Digell Huang, who works as a genetic counselor.
“I am very honored to have this opportunity to taste it,” she added as she ate from a bowl of the isopod-topped noodles.
However, an academic warned against potential health risks, saying the largely unknown species might contain toxins or heavy metals such as mercury.
The Bathynomus jamesi species was recognized officially in Taiwan last year and there is not much data on it, said Huang Ming-chih (黃銘志), a biotechnology associate professor specializing in deep-sea invertebrates at the National University of Tainan.
“The best practice would be to do more research ... build a complete database and then allow people to eat, it would be better that way,” he added.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,