It’s like oysters, only tastier with better texture.

Sauce is tangy but thin, fennel seeds have a really nice flavor but I don’t really like chewing on soaked fennel seeds? Not a good texture combo with mussels, especially because these aren’t smoked but presumably simmered in the sauce they come in. It’s a weird alchemy that makes mussels—which are an objectively on the weird and squidgy side of edible things—appealing to eat, and it doesn’t take that much to tip the balance. I still ate them and they were delicious.