Sometimes my urge for adventure and good food clashes with the word mumble in my head – you know: that nether region of linguistic miasma, where words slide around, hitting each other and bouncing off to get lost around another corner of the brain, or leap in front o f each other like a parent jumping in front of a child to block a runaway bus. So you access that linguistic center, calling, calling. …and the word never even admits it is there. You pick the next best word lying around, hoping it is the right word, because the clock is ticking and your conversation partner is waiting -- You don’t want them to think that you are a moron -- and you move forward, expecting you probably got it right.
Today at lunch, my friend and I ate at a Mexican restaurant in Boulder. Fairly authentic. I wanted to try some of the native dishes on the menu. I decided on a harmless corn tortilla with chicken and vegetables. But I wanted a little something more adventurous. I hadn’t eaten in a good Mexican restaurant in a while. So, I looked at the soups. They had three. One caught my eye because it sounded completely different from any soup I’d ever had. I was just going to get a cup to try.
When the server came to take our order, I asked if the Menudo could be ordered as a cup of soup. “No, ma’am. Just a big bowl.” I took the plunge and ordered it anyway. The server asked me twice if I wanted the tortillas and the Menudo soup before he left our table. I said, “Oh, yes,” figuring I was hungry enough to finish it. From the description, it sounded like beef and some kind of fish. It would be different, but I was excited.
The soup came in a HUGE bowl: tomato base, with lots of whitish and grayish stuff floating in it. Hmmm. I sampled it. It was different. Not bad. Rather fatty. Lots of animal fat. Kinda gamey. After several attempts, I decided I really didn’t like it, and focused on the rest of my lunch. My friend and I chatted for a while and ate our lunch. The server returned and asked if I was finished with the soup, which was still brimming almost to the top of the bowl. I said, “Yes. I didn’t really like that.” He cleared my bowl from the table, a slight smirk on his face. Curious.
My friend asked me if I didn’t like the soup. “Not so much,” I said. She then asked me if I knew what tripe was. “Isn’t that a kind of fish?” I remembered thinking that when I read the description “beef tripe.” Then she told me: beef intestines. Yuck. I laughed so hard, I nearly laughed up those beef intestines. The restaurant should have labeled it a “bowel of soup!” Gaffaw!
I can only guess what had gone on in my mind: “Tripe….er, what? ...snipe? No, that’s a joke….pike?”
So much for adventurous eating!
Posted by ellen at October 8, 2003 02:20 PMNext time try the "Peach ala Frog."
Posted by: Dave Wiley at October 9, 2003 10:48 AM