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I’m Not Eating Caterpillars Though

Alisa and I like to try new things and explore other cultures – and we often do much of that through food. We’ve both dined and made some pretty interesting stuff in the past. So, I’m not coming from simple meat and potato land when I say that there are just a few things I don’t have any interest in ever trying. Things like chicken feet, tongue, or tripe. Thirty-two years along and I’m doing a good job of avoiding these things.

Not so much on the tripe anymore. That’s now on my “won’t have it again willingly” list.

So, Alisa and I are in Chinatown and we decide to have a little Dim Sum snack time. Looking over the choices, we decide on some simple potstickers, some shrimp dumplings, and “Beef With Ginger and Scallions.” It all sounds very good and the pictures look reasonable. The waitress does not speak even remotely good English but about our last selection, the “Beef With Ginger and Scallions,” she says, “No ginger, chai.” I’m spelling it as “chai” because that’s how it sounded when she said it.

Then she said it again, “No ginger, chai.” So, I look at Alisa and say, “It doesn’t have ginger, it has chives.” Well, hell, we’re down with chives. “OK,” I say, “We’ll have the Beef With Chives.” The waitress writes it down and then disappears.

OK, so in retrospect, I completely disregarded, for some reason, a major personal rule of dining out: Understand what your wait staff is bringing to you. Let there be no question about what you will be eating. When the waitress left, I was only something like 85% sure of what the last thing was. Not good enough.

So, the dim sum comes out relatively quickly. Something like two minutes later and everything looks decent, smells alright, but why is the Beef With Chives bumpy? It looks like some kind of noodly covering but, kind of covered in short, think hair. We’re both hesitant but, it’s Beef With Chives so I dig in.

It is not Beef With Chives. It is, instead, “Beef With Tripe” or “Tripe With Chives” or “Tripe With Tripe.” I don’t know if anything else was in it. I really think it was just strips if tripe, knotted, and steamed. It chewed like rubber, it reminded me of eating my own tongue, and it was not an easy swallow.

After I downed it, I asked Alisa, “Is that in me right now? I hate that that tripe is inside my stomach right now.”

And there’s my tripe story. I’m sure it’s like any other tripe story – full of confusion, despair, and regret. Oh, and longing for innocence.