Lizard Tales and Chew Fish

One Fish, Two Fish, Fry Fish, Chew Fish (Guest correspondent Nicholas Spinale with Reis)

“Greek salad, pork souvlaki, chicken souvlaki.” The waiter listed the menu items with a thick Greek accent. “Grilled chicken, grilled pork, fried potatoes,” nothing out of the ordinary until, “Fried sardines.” Now that was something new. As I thought about what to order, I looked at my surroundings. I was on the ocean in a small village in Greece. I might as well try a new Greek food (as opposed to regular meat on a stick), and it might as well be fish. So yes, I ordered the fried sardines.

When the waiter put the plate in front of me, I instantly went into shock. What I saw was not food, but a school of fish squirming to escape my plate and longing to jump into the ocean only thirty feet away. There were about two dozen fish about three inches long and one inch thick. They reminded me of Pompeii victims, for they were all frozen in their last few movements trying to escape the scalding oil. Now I was done imagining. It was time to eat.

How do you eat a whole fish? Do you eat the tail? The bones? What about the eyes? The answer is yes. You eat the whole fish. My first bite consisted of a head and upper body. It did taste a little different than I expected, for it did not taste fishy like halibut or swordfish, but rather like a very crunchy, slightly fishy, oily French fry. It was quite good! However, I was brought out of fried food heaven once a thorny piece of spine got stuck between my molars – I switched to leaving the spine and the tail.

Reis, being the adventurer he is, volunteered to be the first White kid to try. Here are his remarks, “I thought it was strong fishy taste, and you could definitely taste the hint of olive oil. My expression changed instantaneously from brave and bold to yuck and disgusted.”

The fun began once we started playing with our fish leftovers and the stakes from the souvlaki. We played a few games such as swim fishy swim, fish kebab, tower bridge fun, and puppet time.

Lizard Tales (Guest correspondent Peter Spinale)

I gagged as the odor of the lizard’s insides weaved through the hairs within my nose. Yeah, you read this correctly… I ate a lizard’s tail. It wasn’t all for the five euros that Greg bet me and the attention, but the fact that I had done something historic and memorable.

To get into the details, my brother was trying to catch a lizard and accidentally broke off its tail. The tail was squirming around for a solid thirty seconds. My strategy for eating it was breaking it into smaller pieces and swallowing them like pills. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me, since I threw up two of the five pieces. But, I couldn’t give up then! So I miraculously found the willpower to keep going and picked up the two regurgitated lizard parts and deposited them in my abdomen.

With a tail in my stomach, we used the last bit of sunlight jumping off a 17 foot cliff landing into the pleasant Mediterranean. We ended the day with an independent kidís dinner with quality ice cream.

Here’s a video of the whole crazy thing…