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EXCLUSIVE: Horrifying "Cthuken" Creator Speaks
By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 16, 2013
Modified Dec 18, 2013
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Rusty Eulberg
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By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 16, 2013
Modified Dec 18, 2013
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Earlier this morning Twitter user Damana Madden shared a photo of a culinary abomination she called the "Cthuken," a reference to horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's octopus-head creature the "Cthulhu." The haunting photo went viral for obvious reasons, but the origin of the bizarre concoction remained a mystery... until now.
Rusty Eulberg, a database administrator from Lubbock, Texas, tells us he brought forth what he called the Cthurkey about two years ago. Reached by phone at work, Eulberg says, "Apparently my Cthurkey—I always called it a Cthurkey as opposed to a Cthuken (no duck)—blew up online. A buddy of mine just told me he found it on Tumblr."
According to Eulberg, he and wife Jennifer Robledo "wanted to do something unique for Christmas dinner with friends of ours. Jenny is a big fan of Cthulhu so we went and bought some crab legs and some octopus and bacon and cooked them all separate and slapped them together on a plate, and that was it. The next year I made a Cthicken; the same thing using squid instead of octopus and a chicken."
Eulberg says, "The universal reaction was, 'Oh my God, I couldn't eat that.' But each individual piece was cooked separately; all I did was set them together on the plate. It was delicious. The crab leg was awesome and the bacon added a nice flavor to the turkey. And for added horror, the serving platter is an old Nazi plate with a Swastika on the bottom that a friend bought in an old abandoned Luftwaffe base in Germany."
Asked how he'll ever top the Cthurkey, Eulberg tells us he might "do a full-on Cthulhu-themed dinner next Halloween. I don't know how we can make the turkey better, but maybe we can make tentacle cupcakes with gummy worms. And maybe deep fry the whole thing."
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Cthuken
cthulhu
cthurkey
hp lovecraft
texas
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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