The Prince is a peculiar restaurant much like Michael Jackson is a peculiar individual. This is not to say that The Prince resembles anything close to Neverland Ranch or Chuck E. Cheese’s for that matter. It is to say that The Prince gives new meaning to the word eccentric. Michael Jackson is neither “black or white”; he’s “stuck in between.” The Prince is also quite ambiguous and defies you to neatly categorize it. Residing in the historic Windsor Hotel in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, The Prince is stodgy and kitschy at the same time. It is an unconscious homage to timeless steakhouses and The Haunted Mansion. It’s seedy and classy. If there’s something strangely familiar about The Prince, then you may recall Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway here in a scene from the noir classic “Chinatown” where this location doubled as the legendary Brown Derby.
However, the food at The Prince pays tribute to something entirely different.
Popular for its Korean bar snacks, The Prince also pushes an odd assortment of dishes ranging from the restaurant’s crowd pleasing fried chicken to sea snails cooked various ways. The Prince, however, has a culinary dark side. At the end of the heavy bound menu near the bottom of the page are a couple of secret items known only to those who can decipher the Korean script. Are you one of those who wish you could sample something from the non-English menus in Asian eateries? Well, if you are, be careful what you wish for. Acting on a tip from a Deep End Dining reader, I scanned the menu for the live octopus tentacles he recommended. Not seeing it right away, I noticed other intriguing yet suspect items like sautéed silk worms. Then, believing that I spotted my quarry on the menu, I asked the waiter if the “raw octopus tentacles” listed on the page were also live tentacles. He shook his head no and guided me to the back of the menu then pointed to the Korean words. Here is where the live tentacles are found.
He asked stoically, “Are you sure you want that?”
I shot back, “Absolutely.”
I have never been more excited anticipating an exotic dish because I knew this one was going to be extraordinary. Ever since my brother Warren told me about his live tentacles experience years ago in Japan, I’ve been dreaming about the day I’d have live tentacles squirming in my mouth. (Yeah, I know, these Lin kids are batty. Mmmm, bat.)
A couple of soju shooters later, the waiter returned and unceremoniously set a plate in the center of the table catching me and Diane off guard. Some time was needed to register what we were viewing. The sight was uncanny. It was ridiculous and sublime. Both comic and tragic like Greek theatre masks. "What fresh hell is this?" Extremely fresh hell, evidently.
The raging plate of squirming, writhing and willful baby octopus tentacles awed us. If I was the Greek hero Perseus, then this plate before me was the severed head of Medusa the Gorgon with her locks of seething, slithering serpents. Hyperbole? How about understatement. Much like Medusa’s disembodied head, these tentacles still believed they were alive — the limbs attached to a phantom body. Diane’s head spun in a figurative way but bordered on literal. Her brain signals and emotions were cross firing so dramatically that she was laughing, gagging, hyperventilating and sobbing all in the same breath. I offered her the first taste but she replied, “When hell freezes over.” This I interpreted as a “no”.
You have to understand Diane had the wrong perspective on this whole thing. She saw the tentacles as half-dead and I saw them as half-alive. It's all how you see things.
So with a firm grip on my chopsticks I grabbed the first…hmmph, okay…let me start again. So with a firm grip on my chopsticks I grabbed the…alright, just a second…I grabbed my chopsticks and nabbed the first tenta…damnit!!
I was experiencing some technical tentacle difficulties.
You see, one doesn’t grab live tentacles. They grab you. And they grab the plate and the sauce dish and the slices of garlic. In fact, the suckers suction on to anything they contact. If you are able to dip the tentacle into any of the three escorting sauces (a chili paste with raw thinly sliced garlic and jalapeno peppers or the pink, sweet and spicy sauce or a salt and pepper vinegar), then, congratulations, you cleared the first hurdle. Now try getting the thing to come off your chopsticks and into your mouth. This is not a passive piece of toro sashimi we’re talking about. This is an entity that does not want to be eaten alive, dead or otherwise. This is, perhaps, even a thing that would happily take you down with it if it were big enough.
This food hates you and what you did to it!
In every scenario I played out in my imagination as far as eating this dish was concerned, I predicted nothing more than a brief slimy struggle then stillness — the last words of an insignificant creature low on the food chain. Silly me. I could not have underestimated my dinner more because once in my mouth, the tentacle went into attack mode and suctioned on to my teeth, tongue and bottom lip making it nearly impossible for me to manipulate my mouth in order to eat it. My dinner was instinctively trying to preserve its own life while attempting to take mine by asphyxiating me. Needless to say, I was just a little mortified by all this. It was—how would you call it—*bleepin’* freaky!!! And if that wasn’t enough, the tentacle then launched phase two of Operation Indigestion and began to whip itself about in a frenzy like it was krump dancing. In my mouth was the mollusk version of the Tasmanian Devil, ferociously flaying at the roof of my mouth and gums. I could not believe it. The feisty, little shit was kind of hurting me. I snapped out of the absolute stunned trauma of having to fight with my food and attempted to regain control of the situation. Overpowering the tentacle with my tongue and with a little assist from my fingers, I pried the wicked thing from my gums and teeth. At last the tentacle became vulnerable to my molars. Without hesitating, I bit hard on it over and over and over again while mumbling “Die! Die! Die!” Before it could resurrect itself and do a surprise attack like some slasher movie villain, I swallowed deeply and gulped it down. “Get in my belly!” I gasped.
The dust finally settled. After all that, how does live octopus tentacle taste? A little like fury fused with fear. Spicy and garlicky because of the sauce. If you are an especially demented diner, then live octopus tentacles erupt with the flavor of schadenfreude where any gastronomic joy is derived from the creature's (or a part of the creature's) misery. There is no aftertaste but there are aftereffects. (Just don’t think about what the tentacle might be doing in your stomach.) Almost devoid of any flavor, it doesn’t taste a thing like cooked squid and nowhere near fried calamari. The tentacles are highly viscous, more resembling mucous. As far as attitude, it’s the meanest and rudest piece of food I have ever brawled with. And this was only the first piece.
Diane handed me another shot of soju. It promised to be a long night.
