Okay, a few days ago I went to a big dinner with my boyfriend’s family at a Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has a set menu for big parties where they serve things banquet style, so as far as I know nobody in the family chose the actual dishes.

One of the courses was a seafood stir-fry. Most of the dish was familiar items like squid and scallops, but there were there brownish-orange curly things in there. Nobody at the table could figure out what they were so we just ate around them. They were about an inch and a half long, curled over on themselves like a seashell, and the meat was maybe a quarter inch thick. They were about the color of a sweet potato.

Then I had to be a dumbass and try one. Bleurgh! The flavor was fishy, pungent, and cloying. As I chewed on the damn thing this juice squirted out of it. Usually when I’m adventurous about food it pays off. For example, jellyfish is freaking delicious. Not this time.

So what was this thing? I know sea urchins are orange, but I thought they were round? Sort of like scallops? Nobody at dinner seemed to know.