“ – but it’s not cut up like squid or calamari. This baby
octopus looks like they literally just pulled it out of the fish tank
and threw it on the pan; then it’s on your dish. It’s like a baby
octopus. Like it looks like a BABY OCTOPUS.” He was already so
excited he was nearly ranting.
“How does it feel when you’re eating it?” I asked him. I was
intrigued, but part of me didn’t really want to know.
“So it’s very small, like maybe the size of a quarter. It’s
chewy, very chewy and the head of it is almost like a chocolate
Ferrero Rocher candy. But it’s got this kind of rubbery skin, then all
of sudden there’s this gooeyness, and then it’s like...I don’t know
what’s in the center. I don’t think octopus have brains. It’s not like
a very brain type substance, but it’s something weird on the inside.”
It’s probably not chocolate.
Munir isn’t what most people would think of as a thrill-
seeker: he doesn’t jump out of planes or skydive. But as an experi-
ence-seeker, he is drawn to unusual experiences and is eager to
share them with others – even if they aren’t along for the ride
willingly. He once brought energy bars made with cricket flour to
the office to share with his coworkers. And he tricked a girlfriend
into eating something even more unusual.
“I think the weirdest thing that I eat is brain. Goat brain is
literally my favorite dish. Growing up, it always was. I didn’t really
know what it was. Then one day, I opened the freezer and saw
something that looked like brain – like if you imagine a brain in
a cube-like flat surface. I was a little grossed out when my mom told
me what it was but I got over it because it tastes just so amazing. So
I actually once tricked my girlfriend – who had never tried it before
and thought it was the grossest thing ever – into eating it by telling
her that it was steamed cabbage. [It looks a little like steamed
cabbage according to Munir.] She ate it and loved it. She said,
‘This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever had,’ and ate all of it.”
“Did you tell her what it was?”
“I did.”
“Are you still seeing each other?”
“No. No, we’re not.”High sensation-seeking is correlated with a desire for vari-
ety in food and drinks. High sensation-seekers are drawn to unu-
sual, exotic, spicy foods from outside of their culture. But it’s more
than just the experience that helps high sensation-seeking foodies61 / The Everyday Life of a High Sensation-SeekerDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:13, subject to the Cambridge