Sea cucumber soup? Horseshoe crab cakes?

Factual Questions
1

Disclaimer: It was just a TV show.

I was watching an episode of “The Blue Knight” in which Bumper (played by George “That’s what I like about 707s–they can do anything but read” Kennedy) goes into a local Chinese restaurant, where he is served the special of the day, “sea cucumber soup.”

As he is enjoying this delicacy, he quips “I didn’t know they grew in the ocean.”

His waitress tells him, “Oh, it’s not a cucumber. It’s actually a sea. . . slug.” (OK, wrong phylum, but most Hollywood writers are not marine biologists.)

At which point Bumper struggles to maintain what he had previously chowed down.

But the questions:

Are there indeed restaurants that serve such holothurian delicacies?

Similarly, (usually dead) horseshoe crabs can be seen on many beaches along a good part of the east coast, but I’ve never seen anyplace that specialized in preparing any such merostome morsels. From what I have gathered, there is a spot near the tail that is edible, at least it was to the American Indians.

Has anyone ever seen that served anywhere? If so, what was the taste like?

2

I’ve never seen horseshoe crab served, but they have very little meat on them and probably aren’t worth harvesting.

3

Yes, sea cucumbers are a delicacy. Do a Google search for “sea cucumber recipe”. Never eaten one, so I dunno what they taste like.

Yes, horseshoe crabs are edible, although “the ratio of meat to shell is small”.

4

Yep! They have both in a little restaurant in Castine Maine. I was up there going to a workshop at the Maine Maritime Academy and they had horseshoe crab stew and a Sea Cucumber dish. I had the stew and it was great, I was warned against the sea cucumber thing though.

**The horseshoe crab stew is seasonal in the fall and winter.

5

Sea cucumbers are great stuff. Yum.