On Purchasing Squid Ink in the San Francisco Bay Area
Tracy and I decided to make a Spanish rice dish called arroz negro, "black rice," and the recipe called for Squid Ink. On the Peninsula, Squid Ink is hard to come by!
After calling a bunch of places, I finally found Squid Ink at Draeger's, the ultra-high-falutin grocery. I have to hand it to the Draeger's staff: they knew exactly what I was asking for. The Los Altos location doesn't carry it, but Menlo Park and San Mateo do. The fellow on the phone explained that it's sold frozen, in 1 lb blocks (we needed about 2-3 tsp).
As we drove to Draeger's, Tracy and I took bets on how much it would cost. Tracy guessed $10. Me, being a pessimistic guy, guessed $20. Heck, even puny little olives go for $10 at Draeger's.
Inside of Draeger's, we couldn't find the squid ink in the freezer case. We asked at the fish counter. The guy behind the counter pulled a package out of his freezer and handed it to us with a smile. It looked like a ziplock bag of frozen tar.
The price wasn't marked on the package.
--How much? we asked.
--It's $40, he replied, sheepishly. He watched as our jaws dropped and we squirmed uncomfortably, then added (unprompted) Look guys, really the best I can give you is $30.
So who knew that the fish monger was empowered to haggle over SquidInk?
In the end we bought the Squid Ink, and now it's sitting in our freezer. If you come over to our house and we serve you SquidInk pasta or Squid Ink rice or Squid Ink icecream, you'd better appreciate it. In fact, if we serve you Squid Ink ice cream, we expect you to finish it and lick the bowl clean.
SQUID INK (IKA SUMI) Produced by Azuma Foods International Inc Hayward, CA 94545 Net WT: 1.1LBS (500G)
See Also
SichuanPepper