Underground Fugu Club

[Mulboyne]

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Wankers! I bet all the blokes who go to this place have ponytails and slicked back hair...

If they want something exotic with a forbidden Japanese flavor they should eat whale.

[Gum]

[matsuki]

I sure hope they have an appropriate staff selected to run this.

They will likely hire a few token Asians and proceed to promote themselves and safe and professional until someone dies

[Russell]

[waruta]

[Russell]

[kino]

Tried it and it was nothing special and certainly not something you'd risk your life to eat again, no matter how skilled the chef. Of course, that is especially true if you are planning to consume it at an "undisclosed location" under less than transparent circumstances. Sounds like the makings for a CSI: London episode.

[Samurai_Jerk]

"It is quite simply the ultimate food experience."

Interesting. I have yet to meet a person who thinks fugu is great. Every Japanese of FG that's ever told me I "have to" try it has admitted that it's pretty bland when I've asked if it's good. They all say I should just do it "for the experience" but that it's nothing special.

[Russell]

Interesting. I have yet to meet a person who thinks fugu is great. Every Japanese of FG that's ever told me I "have to" try it has admitted that it's pretty bland when I've asked if it's good. They all say I should just do it "for the experience" but that it's nothing special.

The taste of fugu is not the point, it is the experience. Imagine you sit all at a table, knowing that it could be your and everyone's last hour, wouldn't that give a feeling of solidarity and euphoria? Something like La Grande Bouffe (ask Coligny) but then less extreme? Or something like a Fukushima seafood dinner with the result known in less than 24 hours?

[ichigo partygirl]

Of all the things you could risk your life doing, surely this is the most boring and sedate of them all (especially when the pay-off is not high). Better to jump out of a plane or something

[Russell]

Of all the things you could risk your life doing, surely this is the most boring and sedate of them all (especially when the pay-off is not high). Better to jump out of a plane or something

Basically agree with you, though your example is not optimal. Jumping out of a plane is, exciting as it may be, lethal. Eating fugu goes wrong only in rare cases (and mostly when people do something stupid, such as preparing it themselves or by a non-licensed cook).

[tigermilk]

The taste of fugu is not the point, it is the experience. Imagine you sit all at a table, knowing that it could be your and everyone's last hour, wouldn't that give a feeling of solidarity and euphoria? Something like La Grande Bouffe (ask Coligny) but then less extreme? Or something like a Fukushima seafood dinner with the result known in less than 24 hours?

You can get the same effect eating bean sprouts in Europe these days.

I've had fugu in Japan and my health was the last thing on my mind. I figured the chef knew what he was doing so I lacked any euphoria or solidarity with my fellow guests (well, we had solidarity, but that was due to our common line of work and goals, not the meal...).

BTW, the fugu was pretty lame. The nabe that was absent of fugu, on the other hand, had me wanting to lick the pot.

[Mike Oxlong]

What about them bean sprouts, anway?

Last I read, they found no traces of contamination at the farm suspected of being a source, and no contaminated sprouts at any place those infected ate...

[Johnson]

Nah, apparently it was the sprouts from that farm in north-western Germany. (Article in German: http://www.n-tv.de/panorama/NRW-findet-EHEC-auf-Sprossen-article3546631.html)

Mostly old geezers dead tho, and definitely not a Europe-wide issue.

[Mike Oxlong]

Is that right? They have not found the bacteria anywhere AFAIK. Only that they say that the only thing they can find in common with all the victims have is they say they ate bean sprouts.

The strain of Escherichia coli that has caused lethal food poisoning in northern Germany was almost certainly carried by bean sprouts. The bacteria have not been found in food, but epidemiological investigation of what victims ate point towards one German sprout farm.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20562-bean-sprouts-to-blame-for-decadeold-e-coli.html

If they've traced it to a specific farm, you'd think they'd be able to come up with some positive samples given this amount of time.

On the other hand, they have found positive samples on cucumber, even though they cannot be certain it's the source due to the age of the sample.

Investigators in Germany on Wednesday discovered the deadly EHEC strain of E. coli on food for the first time since the outbreak -- on a piece of cucumber retrieved from the garbage of a family infected with the bacterium.

A spokesman for the Health Ministry of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt said the pathogen was the same as the one that has caused 26 deaths and infected more than 2,600 people, most of them in northern Germany, since early May.

However, as the cucumber had been in the garbage bin for two weeks, it was impossible to determine conclusively where the bacteria came from and how it got into the trash, the spokesman said. He added that a member of the family of three had mentioned eating cucumbers before falling ill. The family had not visited northern Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,767434,00.html

This same article goes on to talk about a worker at the farm who may have been one of the sources of infection - a sort of Typhoid Mary sending out pathogens while packaging the sprouts.

[Russell]

They found the bacteria on some old sample of sprouts from that one farm (in someone's garbage bin). What I find amazing here is that they did not think first about sprouts, which have been a well-known cause of this problem, both in Japan and the US.

[Mike Oxlong]

I guess we're reading different articles, as I can't come across a single one that claims any e-coli was found on sprouts. If you did read the second article I linked to, they did find e-coli (the same type as all the Eurpoean victims had) on an old cucumber in someone's bin.

[Russell]

I guess we're reading different articles, as I can't come across a single one that claims any e-coli was found on sprouts. If you did read the second article I linked to, they did find e-coli (the same type as all the Eurpoean victims had) on an old cucumber in someone's bin.

It seems they fished a cucumber from someone's bin (I read that too), but later they could not establish that the EHEC bacteria on that cucumber were originally there. In a different article (1 day later) I read that they could positively identify the bacteria on sprouts. I cannot find these articles in English, though.

I just found an article that gives more info, but unfortunately not the story about what they fished out of some garbage bin:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,767935,00.html

Anyway, it is sure now that sprouts were the culprit.

[Mike Oxlong]

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1134663/1/.html
This story claims it's the bean sprouts from the garbage pail that have tested positive. First one I've seen (in English) that came out and said it. Light on details, but backs the official story line.

[Mike Oxlong]

So far the above story is the only one I've found with a direct statement that sprouts tested positive. Reports from today are still overwhelmingly reporting no positives from bean sprouts yet...

German authorities said Sunday that they haven't yet been able to resolve how sprouts at a farm became contaminated with an aggressive strain of E. coli that has been blamed for 35 deaths.

Officials determined Friday that sprouts grown at the farm in Lower Saxony state, in northern Germany, were to blame for the outbreak, which has also sickened more than 3,000 people.

But the state's agriculture ministry said it wasn't clear whether workers brought in the bug, or whether the bacteria got onto the farm on seeds or by some other means.

Tests on about 1,100 samples, nearly 300 of them from the farm, are ongoing in an effort to answer that question, the ministry said, but they have produced no positive results yet.

AP News

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Of all the things you could risk your life doing, surely this is the most boring and sedate of them all

What about choking on mochi? Then again, I suppose dying while someone's trying to shove a vaccy dow your throat probably isn't altogether sedate...at least you'd probably still be under the kotatsu, though.

[Russell]

So, we now agree that eating fugu caught in Fukushima, served with mochi and uncooked German sprouts, while jumping out of a plane, does not represent the healthiest of lifestyles.

[Coligny]

So, we now agree that eating fugu caught in Fukushima, served with mochi and uncooked German sprouts, while jumping out of a plane, does not represent the healthiest of lifestyles.

You somehow need to involve non-fixed cats with personnality disorder to the mix for a 100% success rate...

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

You somehow need to involve non-fixed cats with personnality disorder to the mix for a 100% success rate...

That description fits me to a tee, but I really, truly want to die on the job (and not get too fat beforehand so that I take her with me when it happens...)