Anyway, yesterday saw me eating lunch again twice. In Lyndon of all places.
I had agreed the night before at the Nachbar to go to my new favorite tapatia with my pal Andy to try some brain tacos. I had been there twice before. Once for chicarrones and the other time for some menudo. The menudo there is really, really good. I'd only had it once before in Minneapolis where I thought it was somewhat hard to get behind. Maybe because I knew what to expect but menudo was far better the second time. I ate all of it, anyway. So, with that in mind I went back looking for brain tacos.
This place is in a strip mall, in what I had presumed was a cracker-ass part of Lyndon, way east, where my brother and I used to go to church. My Patria doesn't seem much like a restaurant. That's probably part of its charm. The fact that it looks like a loading dock. Well.
We placed our orders. One tripas, one chorizo, one brain. And one of those great, gigantic bottles of mexican Coca-Cola, which really is an idea size. A bit of waiting and yakking the cook fella comes out and tells me there are no brains. Actually, I think this is a good thing. See, if theyre running out of brains it means there aren't brains whiling away the hours in reach-in coolers. Which means fresh brains. So, we didn't get to eat brains. That's okay, though. We can always go back. It also gave us a chance to substitute for the lengua which we had missed the first time.
When they came out they looked almost exactly like this:
Let me tell you: tripas is wonderful. The only reason you wouldn't like it because of pre-conceived notions about what food is and isn't. It's got crispy bits like bacon, chewy bits, moist and meaty bits and a wonderful pork flavor. It neither smells nor tastes like asshole. It is fantastic. The tongue was great, too. Again, it looks no different than shredded beef would. And it has a stronger, meatier flavor. And by these yardsticks the chorizo was almost a disappointment because the others were so good. I really can't recommend these highly enough. And considering our lunch was only $6 each there's no excuse.
Well, high on delcious lunch I bought a bound of chicarrones and a pound of pig's ears. Pig ears are weird. I don't now about 'em, frankly. The pig skin is crisp and greasy, and crunchy as all get-out and not really much like a football at all.
Of course, in driving back we drove past the Jade Palace which we had recently read as having chicken feet on the Dim Sum menu.
"Hey, Andy, you wanna get some chicken feet while we're here?"
"Well, I'm not at all hungry. What the hell..."
And so we walked in. The lady asked us "lunch menu or dinner menu" as it was around three or four, straddling lunch and dinner hours. "Uh, chicken feet?" I asked, which got us a third menu.
It was the dim sum menu and it looked really good. At least, it looked good. Granted, we had just eaten lunch. So, we stuck to the "White Spicy Chicken Feet," the "Honeycomb Beef Tripe" and another form of chicken feet which I forget the name of but came in broth and was red.
The white, spicy chicken feet came out. They were just chicken feet with a splash of chili oil, scallions, and cilantro. Nothing else. They looked like this:
Very challenging even for me who likes the freaky bits. I mean, the relationship between birds and lizards is plain as day!
I pause.
"What's the matter," Andy asks me, "cold feet?"
"Yes, actually. A half dozen."
But, again, this is food, right? Well, chicken feet don't have much going for them but skin, connective tissue, and tendons. I think gnawing is a pretty good word for how I ate them.
I do, however, think it's charming that a fellow in the kitchen put them on a plate, drizzled a bit of chili oil on them, sprinkled them with the cilantro and scallion and thought, "yes, this is finished. Now, I wish to see those crackers gnaw on this for awhile." So, it was amazing. Don't try it.
Next was a ind of stewed honeycomb tripe which smells strong and tastes that way, too. We were lucky that we had been practicing jawing all afternoon because it certainly came in handy.
Finally, the sent us out a plate of these red chicken feet which were like the white one but they had clearly been cooked again and the skin was falling off and quite nice. Not much different than wings, really.
Actually, this only came to $11 so it was pretty economical, really. I mean, we both ate lunch twice for under twenty-five dollars. Not bad. Although, second lunch didn't actually feature very much in the manner of ounces of food consumed there was a lot of eating involved. So, yeah, lunch.
I'll keep you updated about my brain-eating.
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