September 18, 2018

Should I Know What I’m Eating? This is from the Indonesian Food Bazaar last weekend in Elmhurst. It looks great, doesn’t it? But once I tell you what they are, many of you would probably change your mind. (Thank you @nigelsie for identifying them.) Front right is cow’s lung, and back right is cow’s skin. The left side is not particularly exotic: clams in the back and grated coconut wrapped in cassava leaves in front.

I’m a pretty adventurous eater but I have to admit that knowing what it is in advance definitely affects how it tastes. Cow’s lung didn’t have much flavor. It just provided an interesting texture for the green chili on top, but knowing that it’s a piece of lung put my mind on alert in case it tasted nasty. If it tasted familiar, it would probably have put my mind at ease but it didn’t remind me of anything, so my mind was in limbo and stayed on alert. This was actually the second time I’ve had it but I still wasn’t fully relaxed about the idea.

Cow’s skin had a texture that is somewhere between mochi and tofu. Conceptually, it too was a strange experience because I was essentially eating leather like Charlie Chaplin. They both tasted good but it was almost like trying to watch a movie in the middle of a hurricane.

ating something exotic is much harder than seeing an art exhibit by a controversial artist like Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst because you have to literally risk your own body. Koons or Hirst cannot hurt me but food can. It even becomes part of you, at least for a short while.

I wonder what would happen to the art world if seeing art required risking our bodies. It might be able to effectively purge superficial scenesters

#foodie #indonesia #indonesianfood #eatqueens #queensfood #queenseats #instafood #nyceeeeeats #nycfoodie #nycfood #cowslung #cowsskin #elmhurst