More Questions Answered - And A Diagram!

In addition to being a fun dinner cohort, my friend John was also helpful in helping me further answer the age old question: "What is the difference between squid and cuttlefish".

Many of you saw my earlier posting. Although there weren't official comments about this topic posted, I'm sure it's resulted in many sleepless nights for you all. Fear not. John is here to save the day and to provide us with some answers.

To start, John drew me a picture. Being ill-prepared, I grabbed the only paper in my purse, a tourist map of Portland from Powell's Books. John appropriately drew the squid and cuttlefish in the blue water part of the map (“Where they belong” as he put it). Look hard...they're in there! Cuttlefish is the top one above the bridge, and the squid is the one below the bridge.

Note: diagram not drawn to scale

John explained that the 'hood' of the cuttlefish is bigger, and the squid tentacles tend to be longer. There are eyes on squid, I’m not sure why we didn’t talk about the eyes or lack of eyes on cuttlefish, but there aren’t any on this diagram. However after some researching online, I learned cuttlefish have eyes too. He also confirmed what I knew already, cuttlefish is much more popular in Asia and squid is much more popular in the U.S. And as he described it, the cuttlefish is almost a hybrid of or the perfect thing 'in-between' a squid and an octopus.

How is he so smart you ask? Well, doesn't hurt that he's a chef. Being the talented executive chef of Pazzo Ristorante in Portland, John is a very busy man. I was lucky enough to be able to spend time with John on one of his precious nights off. He talked about many of his cooking adventures and experiences (including cleaning out hundreds and hundreds of cuttlefish during some time when he was cooking in Italy).

The meal we had was great. More on that soon!

In terms of my squid vs cuttlefish debate, I think I’ve found enough answers and have done plenty of my own additional research online. At this point, what's most important? I like eating both of them. Onto the next food world unanswered question.