@Dashiefluffywaifu
Brace your sphincters for too much information.
If it’s prepared so it’s still in the shell, and the spikes are still twitching or moving, then you get the ‘real flavor’ of it. It’s a little like eating melted cheese poured over rocks straight out of the ocean. In other words, it tastes like the ocean smells and tastes, if it were a cheese. Plus you’re eating something that looks like it’s still alive, so … there’s that. Plus it’s going to cost, like, $500 a plate or something. I don’t know for sure, I didn’t pay for the meal, but just based on the location and the hospitality it probably cost $500 a person just to get in through the front door.
If it’s prepared as a paste, like you get in grocery stores, it’s probably going to taste like green tea icecream. Or it might be green tea icecream served as ‘Uni on a stick’.
If it’s at a sushi restaurant that most people can afford to get into, then it’s probably going to be mixed with rice and seaweed to hide the flavor. Because, honestly, the flavor is pretty strong. Also they seem to be really hard to clean before serving them, so mixing them up with a bunch of other stuff helps hide all the … stuff that didn’t get cleaned out.
And it can be served other ways, but mostly it’s just differences of how it’s prepared.
Basically, if you love the taste of roasted seaweed snacks, then you probably will like Uni/Sea Urchin.
@Communist Starlight
In coastal cities, it’s almost always the way to go. In Japan, this is supper. It’s supper every day.
Inside continents more than a day’s drive from the sea, then … it depends on the restaurant. It depends a LOT.
For myself, I like to take sushi tuna steaks and give them a quick sear on each side on the barbie with a couple prawns. That way it’s sashimi in the middle but you still get the fried taste on the outside. Double yum!