If you're dining in a restaurant serving Japanese cuisine, and you order "tako", you can expect to be eating:

Ordering tako or taco (both pronounced similarly) can have very different results depending on where you are. If you're at Taco Bell, you might receive a tasty meal of ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese in a corn or flour tortilla. On the other hand, the same order in a Japanese cuisine restaurant, will find you enjoying an aquatic animal with several legs. Tako is a Japanese word meaning "Octopus". As Japan is a nation of islands, much of it's cuisine comes from the sea. While enjoying a delicious meal in a Japanese restaurant, part of the fun involves seeing the many items on a colorful and vivid menu and learning their names in Japanese!

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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24 Comments

lucasmats

When I growing up and himogi (hungry), sashimi included slices of tako (octopus), maguro (tuna), buri (Yellowtal), and awabi (abalone) at home and sushi was chirashi (mixed), futo (football) or nori maki (seaweed wrapped). You can't get big abalone anymore to eat raw and no one remembers how to make the proper miso dessing for it anyhow. Now they put small pieces of sashimi on top of rice and call it sushii. It's easier to eat with fingers than sashimi with hashi (chop sticks), but how do they eat the shoga (ginger)? I know you guys are going to thumb me down, but ordering correctly gets me a better meal (Don't point with chopsticks)

catmom

Besides not pointing with chopsticks, I think it's considered to be rude. Totally love octopus, etc.

Richard D. Boyle

Have eaten in Japan but that didn’t keep me from breaking my string. Went with sushi .

Jas Newman

robert karel, Take-out tako—good one ;=)

Lisa Rodrigues

lucasmats, The sushi you are describing is called nigiri. It has been around for a very long time. When Tokyo was still known as Edo in the early 19th century, mobile food stalls run by street vendors became popular. During this period nigiri sushi (握り寿司) was introduced, consisting of an oblong mound of rice with a slice of fish draped over it. After the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, nigiri sushi chefs were displaced from Edo throughout Japan, popularizing the dish throughout the country.