Geoduck appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Geoduck · Seattle
The Puget Sound clam with a foot-long siphon that locals pronounce gooey-duck. Sliced sashimi-thin at Maneki and Sushi Kashiba; cracked into chowder at Pike Place.
Geoduck is the world's largest burrowing clam, native to the tidal flats of Puget Sound, Hood Canal and British Columbia. The Coast Salish dug it at low tide for millennia. The first state commercial harvest opened in 1970, sold to Japan and Hong Kong where the siphon is prized for raw and hot-pot cookery; the Washington fishery is now worth $80 million a year, with strict quotas managed by the state and the tribes. The clam can live 165 years and weighs 1 to 3 kilograms. In Seattle, sushi bars like Maneki and Sushi Kashiba slice the siphon paper-thin for nigiri called mirugai. Pike Place fishmongers display them whole in ice tanks for the photo opportunity; the body meat goes into chowder and the siphon into sashimi.
Where to eat in Seattle:
- Sushi Kashiba
- Maneki
- Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar Pioneer Square