Last night, my fiancée and I went out to dinner with her mother, who is visiting from the Philadelphia area. After an aborted mission to eat seafood at the Red Fish in Canton (closed, maybe for good (?) - their web site is now a random register.com search portal), we decided to head over to Ikaros Restaurant in Greektown as we'd been meaning to try some Baltimore Greek food.

It was a nice place, family-friendly, with a fairly extensive menu. Being ovo-lacto-pesco-vegetarians, we honed in on the seafood. K ordered the Shrimp Guvetsaki with Rice, a sure win. Her mother, who does not adhere to our blasphemous ways of avoiding the consumption of land-dwellers, ordered the Stuffed Grape Leaves appetizer, another sure win (except for that ground beef thing).

I, on the other hand, being of an adventurous culinary nature, and suddenly feeling like this could be my episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, decided to try one of the specials - Octopus With Rice and Feta.

Now, I thought I liked octopus - I've eaten it in seafood stews, I've eaten it as sushi, I've eaten it in random Spanish dishes I can't even remember the names of... But, I'd never had octopus like this before.

Here's the official description of my meal: "Fresh octopus cut in small pieces, seasoned w/ herbs and wine, cooked w/ rice pilaf, and topped w/ feta cheese."

When my dish arrived, I thought they'd made a mistake. That's octopus? It doesn't look like octopus, I thought. (Sorry, at the time I didn't think to snap a picture with my cell phone.) That doesn't taste like octopus. That doesn't have the texture of octopus. I even asked my waitress to make sure. She reassured me, but I was skeptical until I found one of the beast's briny tentacles lurking in the rice pilaf.

I quickly felt my episode of No Reservations transforming into an outtake from Bizarre Foods - Andrew Zimmern, you've got to try this dish... Apparently, when octopus is left to marinate in "herbs" and Greek white wine, then baked with rice pilaf and smothered in feta cheese, it transforms into something strange and, quite frankly, disturbing - the infamous OCTOPORK!

I swear, I thought I was eating pigs' ears and snouts. That texture totally reminded me of how I imagine pigs' feet. Waitress, are you sure that's not swine in my pilaf? Ah, well...

Imagine a creature straight out of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, not as cuddly as a rakunk, not as weird as a pigoon, and not quite as ferocious as a bobkitten, but even more disturbing - an amalgam of the dark briny depths and a wild boar. All tentacles and snout. It gives me the shivers.

Could be worse, I guess, like that time my mother snuck the chicken hearts into the mole... Or I ended up with soup from what used to be my favorite Thai restaurant that, literally, tasted like ass...