Offal has a public relations problem. The term itself derives from
a German word, which is bad enough; worse is that the German word in
question loosely translates to "garbage." In terms of culinary
marketability, that's pretty much the opposite of deriving from an
Italian phrase translating to "springtime in fucking Milan" (primavera
nello scopare Milano). This may explain offal's relative scarcity in
Western cuisine.
Or maybe it doesn't. After all, offal -
which refers broadly to the organs of animals, as opposed to their
actual meat - may be on the permanent down-low for reasons other than
image. Perhaps it makes for a wonderful dish but nobody knows this
except for the Chinese and a couple of Turkish sheep herders somewhere,
presumably Turkey. Perhaps offal is simply a bad thing to eat and it's
the Chinese and Turks who are wrong. The world is a rich tapestry of
possibilities. In search of the truth, I headed over to the Main Street
area in Flushing, Queens, itself home to some 50,000 Chinese, those
grand global champions of utterly un-Western cuisine.
The
district is more explicitly Chinese than such other Chinatowns as that
of lower Manhattan. There are the obligatory store signs making liberal
use of the terms "fortunate," "friendship," "family," "happy," and
"happy family;" there is the ubiquitous smoking of cigarettes; there
are the tables set up on the street by members of the Falun Dafa with
banners exhorting passerby to quit the Chinese Communist Party, which
is a pretty reasonable thing to do when you find yourself living in
Queens.
My specific destination was the underground food
court of the Golden Mall, itself purported to be the city's grandest
collection of ultra-authentic Chinese food in general and offal in
particular. It was an educational little trip; for instance, I had no
idea that I suffer from social anxiety disorder until I walked down the
steps and found myself being stared at by three dozen middle-aged Asian
women. Apparently I find this very intimidating.
The food
court itself is made up of nearly two dozen tiny eateries with open
kitchens, with a video rental place and a shoe store thrown in at
opposite ends for good measure or the Chinese equivalent thereof.
Several of these little outlets specialize in regional variants of
Middle Kingdom fare, though there's no particular go-to spot for offal;
such things make up a small percentage of each menu or none at all, so
you'll have to do a little browsing to get a sense of what's available.
I suggest doing this while taking mysterious notes and occasionally
pausing to stare off into space. This will ensure that you are noticed.
My first foray into the realm of offal was beef tripe with
red pepper sauce ($6), obtained at a place with no visible English name
but which is located across the passageway from another joint called
Happy Family, next to the shoe store. The sauce was swell, admirably
spicy in the inimitable manner of a culture that's had easy access to
spice for thousands of years. But the tripe itself will presumably put
off the average Western palate. One problem is its necessarily soft
consistency, an alarming attribute that sets off conceptual alarm bells
among the uninitiated. The other problem is that it tastes terrible.
Specifically, it's most reminiscent of menudo, the Mexican soup that's
also made from beef tripe. But whereas menudo is generally tolerable to
the novice tongue, this Chinese take on cow stomach lining is, one may
presume, a more acquired taste. But one may also wonder how long it
would take to acquire it.
I decided to try another dish from
the same place, which offered a couple of other offal options including
sheered pig's tripe with red chili sauce ($6) and fried intestines with
green pepper ($9). I went with the pig ears ($6), which are here served
in slices with soy sauce, although I added some duck sauce into the mix
just because I can. The pig ears tasted of pork, which is a fine enough
thing for pig ears to taste like. And although they were of a
consistency similar to that of the beef tripe, the effect here was
benevolent rather than frightening. All in all, the pig ears were
pleasing to my forked gweilo tongue.
I wandered around a bit
more. One place offered something called a "meat vegetable wheat
pancake," which certainly is a lot of things. Another stall seemed to
specialize in hands; the menu listed pig hands, ox hands, even eel
hands. Then I realized that these weren't hands at all, but rather pig,
ox, and eel served with "hand-pulled noodles." The eel should have
tipped me off.
One place advantageously located in the midst
of everything, known as Xi'an Small Delights, offered stewed lamb spine
($7). This, apparently, is an extreme rarity outside of northern China,
which is a damned shame; ripping the flesh from an animal's spine with
one's teeth really gets the blood pumping (I did this in an
unnecessarily savage manner for the benefit of the small children who
were staring at me from the next table). The flesh itself, aside from
being only slightly recognizable as lamb, was awash in some sort of
flowery flavor very much unlike anything I've tasted elsewhere; an
attempted conversation with the chef didn't solve the mystery and in
fact left both parties very confused, but a little internet research
after the fact seemed to indicate that the flavor stemmed from anise, a
plant native to south Asia which is often used in stewed dishes of this
sort. So, there you go.