Octopus

Somewhere in the afterlife, there will be an irate octopus waiting for Dmitri Chimes. The 49-year-old restaurateur jokes uneasily about this, but there has to be some kind of catch, right? "I often wonder about how I'm going to have to pay in the future," he says, "for all this octopus I've sold. " It is an unlikely scenario for conservative Philadelphia: Former rock guitarist for '70s groups like the Broad Street Dirt Band and the Burning Dogs turns tiny neighborhood restaurant into a local phenomenon; menu includes basic Greek seafood specialties, including boatloads of grilled octopus.

Working man's food - it has to be good on the go, filling and cheap. Philly has its cheesesteaks, of course, Chicago its deep-dish pizza and Tokyo the takoyaki. That's "tako" meaning octopus plus "yaki" for grill: pieces of octopus-flavor balls of crepe-like dough that are served with a sweet sauce that has notes of plum, apricot and just a hint of vinegar and clove. A garnish of bonito-fish flakes adds to the aromatic quality. Philadelphia now has its own version of this street food - Maru Global, on 10th Street near Locust.

DUNEDIN, Fla. - Some stories are irresistible. Whether they happen to be true or not is almost beside the point. That's how it is with Matt Anderson and the octopus. The story of a onetime No. 1 draft pick blowing his career by tossing an eight-legged sea creature is just too bizarre to go away. Anderson, who acknowledges tossing the cephalopod in a strange pregame promotional event while he was with the Tigers, has always maintained that the injury to his arm that very night was a mere coincidence.

The week of Feb. 1 marks the opening of Maru Global (255 S. 10th St., 267-273-0567), Philadelphia's first quick-serve eatery focused on takoyaki, the puffy, fried crepe balls. The Japanese street food is traditionally studded with octopus, but Tokyo-born chef Ryo Igarashi and his wife, Nicole, both local restaurant veterans, are offering multiple varieties, including Philly cheesesteak, pizza, spicy shrimp, barbecue, and sweet-and-sour miso. The original, based on scallion and red ginger, can be made to order with shrimp, chicken, sirloin, or octopus.

  Most days, Jeff Nash, a lawyer and Camden County freeholder, wears a suit and tie. On Sunday, he'll dress as an octopus, with eight black tentacles stretching from his hooded sweatshirt and with his face and shoes painted gold. Nash, who is also vice chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, is part of an intermittent Mummers comic brigade known as the Golden Schleppers. The group of South Jersey politicians, county, and municipal workers and their friends came together in 1990 but hasn't participated for 10 years since a key member died, Nash said.

SEOUL, South Korea - I have made it a general rule in life to avoid eating anything that fights back. Nonetheless, here at Noryangjin fish market, the dish before me - fully alive only moments before - is still squirming. "Chew vigorously," my friend Nick advises me, as I seize a particularly ambitious piece of sannakji - a freshly dismembered bit of raw octopus tentacle - between the metal blades of my chopsticks, dredge it through a small dish of sesame oil, and pop it, writhing, into my mouth.

When Joyce Wallacavage tells you her son Adam "isn't normal," it's cause for laughter - and admiration. "Thank goodness he's not normal, whatever that is," she says. It's hard to explain exactly what she means, but after meeting Adam, you know it has something to do with being creative and funny and sweetly different from probably anyone else you know. Adam Wallacavage (his surname is Lithuanian, with the accent on wall ) is 38 but looks younger. He has green eyes that don't always find yours, an ironic manner that confuses - Is he serious?

There's really only one way to skin a cuttlefish: very carefully. You want to remove the spine and the innards without spilling the ink sac. But oops! Pippo Lamberti, the exciting young chef at Positano Coast, who has gathered us together on this August afternoon so that we may learn to cook with cephalopods such as cuttlefish, squid and octopus, accidentally breaks the sac. Too bad, but not a disaster. Ink from cuttlefish (and squid) is often used to tint risotto or pasta, but that's not what Lamberti, 25, planned for today.

WITH SO much talk about Pizzeria Stella, at Head House Square, it seemed time to head on over and find out if this upper-crust pizzeria was the real deal, or just blowing smoke from its wood-burning oven. In my mind, few starters stimulate the appetite better than prosciutto from the San Daniele region, so an order ($10) went in before we even made our pie choices. One of the characteristics for preferring this cured ham over Prosciutto di Parma is that it is slightly sweeter, less salty, and the texture is softer.

Eating one's words on occasion is a price one pays for being a critic. But, given a choice, one would rather not. Which is why I was delighted to reread in my 1991 review of the then-new Ritz-Carlton Dining Room a prediction that has come to pass. What I said then was: "The Ritz-Carlton would probably be a superior choice for hotel dining once the staff gets over its first-year jitters. " The staff has and the place is. On two recent review visits, the service was smooth and unobtrusive, all the better for letting us savor a dining room so elegantly outfitted that we could feel - however temporarily - like old money at home.