While it may simply be an invention of Sushi Takahashi, a restaurant in Portland, tako salad consists of chunks of raw tako (octopus) over a bed of sunomono (cucumber salad with vinegar). Quite tasty, and not to be confused with taco salad. I find the tako in this dish to be quite different from the more common tako nigiri: the pieces used are either cut differently or from a different part of the animal. Tako salad's octopus has more of the red outer skin, and I find it to be more flavorful than the nigiri version.