Second look at eating eyeballs?

Indeed, Asian cultures probably win the prize for not just tolerating but embracing fish eyes, both raw, as in sushi, and cooked. “I’ve had the fist-sized eye of a garoupa, steamed and garnished. (Gelatinous.),” one of our intrepid readers commented. “And in Asia fish tend to be cooked with the head on — it’s a sign of good fortune when things have a head and a tail!”

Shanghai-born food blogger Chichi Wang relishes fish eyes: “The trick to eating a fish eyeball is to keep it in your mouth for as long as possible,” she writes. “A rush of fatty fish flavor is accompanied by a gelatinous, spongy texture. Swallow too quickly and you’ll miss the nuances.”

When she was little, Wang’s mom always saved the fish eyes just for her. So when relatives recently gathered at a Cantonese restaurant, Wang offered her mom the fish eyes as a special treat.

“Take that away,” her mom said. “Fish eyeballs are really gross.”