Friday was Ming‘s birthday so he had a nice get together at his home in Singapore.
There’s nothing like having a small private dinner with 10-20 close friends over a BBQ stove… and if there’s anything else to add fun to the party, it’s how everyone with the exception of me and a few others took some effort to prepare a dish of their own.
One of the cravings the birthday boy had for the day was Lobster!
So in the afternoon we drove far far away to some supermarket to get fresh lobster. Now I don’t eat seafood because well… I just don’t.
Therefore you can imagine how kind of disgusted I was when the supermarket staff started taking out some struggling live lobsters from a tank full of them.
That of course… wasn’t as disgusting as what I witnessed a few hours later.
When we got back to Ming’s house, one of Ming’s friend took charge in preparing the lobsters for BBQ… and these were lobsters that were still alive mind you.
The preparation disturbed me a little.
First, the chef inserted a satay stick far into the butt of the lobster to remove its urinal thread. You basically see all the lobster’s shit/piss come out from there and the lobster struggling in the palms of his hand.
Another friend who was there worked in the hotel line and he told me that when people boil a lobster it normally curls up as it is boiled to death and nobody wants to eat a curled up lobster.
So what they do at the restaurants in the hotel is… stick a long satay stick from the back to the front of the lobster while the lobster is still alive.
Only then is the lobster thrown into the boiling pot and cooked alive.
Anyway back to the lobster I was watching being made.
Then the chef grabbed a big knife like this, and carefully plunged it into the head of the lobster while holding it tight.
The lobster at this point would struggle again but eventually die down when the blade has gone deep inside its head and through its brain.
The dying lobsters are then left in the sink for them to slowly die.
Now here’s where it gets a little more sick.
The cook then takes the big knife and shove it down the middle of the lobster, then pulling the knife down to cut the lobster into half.
When the knife comes down, you can hear a sound that is very very similar to human bones cracking.
If the knife doesn’t cut the lobster into two well enough, the chef will use a scissors to cut it into half.
Now here’s the really really freaky part.
Apparently according to the chef, sometimes when he does this to the lobster, the lobster still moves…. how can a lobster that is cut into half still move or do anything resembling still being alive!!!
Here’s how a split lobster looks like. The yellow part is apparently its brain.
The chef puts more of them together then seasons them.
Before wrapping them in aluminum foil to be later thrown into the fiery hot BBQ pit.
I didn’t touch any of the lobster that night but apparently everyone there said it was delicious.
I’m just gonna stick to my usual stuff… like the nice sausages I have at Jarrod & Rawlings.
And NOOOooo I DO NOT want to know how sausages are made.. I bet it’s disgusting too.
For those of you who want to see how the lobsters get killed one by one, I took a video.
You can hear Ming in the background providing the sound effects of
“AHHH.. AHH!!! AHH!!!”
But some of the lobsters when they were killed, they actually let out a bit of a screaming sound.
No more lobster for me!
PS: Oh yeah.. it’s lobster.. not crayfish okay? Don’t call it crayfish. Somebody that night said it was a crayfish and Ming shouted
“OI!!! IT’S A LOBSTER!!! I PAID SO MUCH FOR IT!!!”
Update: Okay seeing that there is a bit of debate of the many ways to kill a lobster I’ve decided to put up a fun poll of this on the sidebar of my blog.
Look there and do the poll, there are 3 options, boiled to death, frozen to death or stabbed to death.
I’m not gonna tell you which one I’d rather go for but.. eww…
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space