Let’s get some of the tamer food items out of the way first, before I dip too far into my weekly recap of culinary depravity.
Here’s something that everyone can get behind, A&W deep-fried cheese curds!
Served hot and fresh, they were a little taste of home. But they had a lot of nerve calling the dipping sauce "marinara." It tasted more like ketchup mixed with barbecue sauce.
These unnamed crackers had the primary ingredient of rice flour and the primary taste of MSG.
These TAKO chips proudly declared themselves to be octopus-flavored.
If you look closely, the chips themselves have cute little tentacles!
I finally visited the lunch counter attached to my favorite Korean grocery. Most of the entrees were $5. But my food-frakking deputy Julia and I ordered the only things on the menu that topped off at $8. She got the stir-fried octopus and I got the bulgogi, barbecued beef.
I couldn’t identify all the little bowls of tasty things. There was some sort of pancakey thing, the usual kimchee, and some cubes of pickled vegetable of an entirely unrecognizable species. Maybe a gourd or tuber of some sort.
Here’s a close-up of the octopus.
When you ate the tentacles, the suction cups popped off and rolled around your mouth like rubbery ball bearings.
My pal and I visited that taco cart in front of the tejano club again. Just to add to this blog’s head-porn content, here’s a closeup of the inside of his barbacoa taco:
I ordered the tongue (lengua) taco.
This was prepared much different than the previous tongue taco I ate. This tongue came in delicous, tender cubes. You can even see the bumps!
While I’m on the subject of a cow’s mouth, I bought some chorizo the other day from one of the little neighborhood Mexican markets.
Take a closer look at the ingredients:
Now the funny thing is, just last week I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because I was terrified that nobody was making good use of all those salivary glands out there. I should have realized that those Mexicans would be on it already.
After frying up the chorizo I mixed it in with some refried beans and made tostadas. The tomatoes are courtesy of my housemate’s amazingly productive romano plants.
I should point out the San Luis hot sauce. You know a hot sauce is industrial grade when it comes in the same kind of bottle as bleach. This is a condiment designed to stay outside in the sun all day on a Mexico City taco cart. It cost me $1.59.
Finally, I want you to take a moment to read everything on this packaging.
I… I… I’m at a loss for words. It’s as if I wrote that packaging copy myself. Although what the package doesn’t mention is that a mouthful of southern satisfaction is so hard and crunchy that you’re liable to lose a filling.
