On Tuesday, February 2, 2021 at 3:18:58 AM UTC-5, Opinicus wrote:
> First, the so-called "joke":
>
> "My friend, celebrating a special occasion, went to a restaurant and
> ordered what she thought would be a lobster tail. But to her dismay,
> the entire crustacean was on her plate. "He's looking right at me!"
> she exclaimed to the waiter. "I just can't eat him." The waiter
> removed her plate, but returned it a few moments later. The lobster
> now had a blindfold neatly tied around its eyes."
>
> Now the question:
>
> I first encountered something like this in an issue of National
> Lampoon after having been outside the US for about a decade. The
> NatLamp joke was a cartoon with the caption "Fish with the head left
> on: Food that watches you eat it" or something like that. I've since
> heard this "food that watches you eat it" business brought up in
> real-life situations many times since. Has this become a "thing" in
> the US? Elsewhere? I never heard of it growing up either in the New
> York area or in Seattle.

"Growing up" is the key term here. American foodways have expanded
quite a bit since we were growing up.

That said, you'll mainly see head-on seafood in ethnic and high-end
restaurants. It hasn't quite penetrated down to Red Lobster.

I've had head-on finfish in Chinese restaurants, and head-on shrimp
in Japanese restaurants.

Oh, and don't forget head-on crawfish in classic Louisiana crawdad boils.
I learned to "suck head" about 32 years ago during a visit to
Thibodeaux, LA.

Cindy Hamilton