Traveling along the East coast of Australia has many opportunities for trying fresh seafood. Along the journey I was able to try various types of fish including barramundi and flake. Flake is actually a friendly name for gummy shark - which seems redundant since I only know gummy shark in the United States as a chewy candy. One of the stops we made outside of Freycinet was at the Freycinet Marine Farm. There will be more about that in an upcoming blog entry. What you need to know is that the main focus of this place is the farming of pacific oysters. They have up to four million oysters growing at any one time. They sell most of the oysters to local restaurants from a location just a few minutes from the farm so you know they are fresh. In addition to oysters, they also sell sea urchin. This is something I have always seen on exotic menus but never had tried it. Now was that time. They charged $18 AUD for a plate of about eight urchin which is roughly $13.50 USD
It looks like it has a very rough texture - perhaps like the bumps you have on the top of your tongue. It also looks like it would be very gooey or like a paste. Appearances can be deceiving. When I picked it up with my fork, the texture was clearly firm but flexible. Now it was time to taste it. Immediately I got a bright, clean, fresh taste of the ocean with just a bit of savory notes. Certainly not as briney as I expected. The texture was somewhere between the belly of a fried clam and an escargot. It didn't melt in my mouth like a clam belly would, and it had a small amount of chew. The finishing notes were of fresh ocean.
I imagine some would have a hard time with this based on the appearance alone. I agree it is not the most appealing snack. If you are able to put that aside, or perhaps use a blindfold, I think anyone who likes the fresh taste of seafood would also like sea urchin.
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