exotic meats

[Blarg]

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Tripe is actually really good, the hard part is finding the restaurants that serve the food though, rather than deciding on what to try.

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I'm turkish, and having various kinds of tripe soup with lots of garlic and vinegar after a long night of drinking is pretty standard. Right now I live in spain and most restaurants serve various kinds of tripe. They also serve a lot of cheek meat that I love. One thing I haven't gotten around to trying yet is pigs ears, about which I've heard mixed reviews.

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Ive had pigs foot/ear that was used to flavor tomato sauce, I just tried a little peice, nothing spectacular. What is really funny about this whole trend is that people are paying tons of money, to eat crap. Snoot, ears, feet, tail, those are [censored] parts of the pig, and the only reason to eat them is because there was nothing else available. People are paying top dollar to eat like poor people, and dont even realize it.

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That's how I've felt when eating with Asians sometimes at authentic places and at home. They love to eat chicken's feet and gelatinated blocks of blood and even just huge hunks of cartilage(which is basically flavorless but has a not particularly appealing texture, to me anyway).

To me this is all just trash, even if you find something to like in the flavor. And ligaments and tendons and cartilage have next to no flavor, so what's the point? Yet even wealthy Asians will shovel this stuff in happily. I've gone to a big Asian meal where there was basically almost nothing I would consider "real" to eat -- just tendon and blood and cartilage. Just scraps. I can eat it, but it's not fun and not satisfying.

[RunDownHouse]

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I love to eat meat, and when I go to restaurants I tend to have what I'm most used to, which is beef, lamb, chicken and the occasional other poultry

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I'm completely the opposite. If its got a meat I haven't ever had on the menu, that's what I'm going to get the vast majority of the time. The worst "meat" I've had is chicken feet. I just couldn't get around actually chewing through the foot bones and then sucking the meat and gristle off the toes. It was cooked in some sort of garlic/ginger sauce, so the taste was ok, but I couldn't help but think the whole time that any chicken meat would taste just as good without the texture problems.

When I worked at a smaller commercial kitchen in Utah, I ordered rattlesnake, planning on making a rattlesnake stew as an entree. There was about a week lag between ordering and delivery. Apparently word got out that it was coming, and there were a ton of Navajos working there. They literally wanted to hurt me for even daring to order rattlesnake. Apparently its a sacred animal to them, and if I had received it and cooked, they couldn't eat anything cooked in the same pot, with the same knife, with the same tongs, etc, ever again. My order was diverted to an upscale restaurant and I never got to try it.

This was the same place where a coworker had his brakes sabotaged, so there were definitely some anti-social, angry people around.

[mrkilla]

gah i thought the thread was about this

[Wu36]

squab is pretty awesome.

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Bald Eagle is unspeakably toothsome.

[TiK]

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Lately I've been wondering if I miss out on anything by not ordering some of the less common things that I occasionally see on the menu, such as kangaroo or ostrich.

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I've never had ostrich, but I've had kangaroo steak a few times. It was tender, juicy and delicious. It tasted like beef.

[MikeHoncho]

My ex-gf used to love to eat chicken feet when we went to Dim Sum restaraunts. I tried them once and now I get a gag reflex every time I think about it. Good times.

[StevieG]

Venison will always attract my attention on a menu. Rabbit will, also.

Frogs legs are light and tender.

Just yesterday for lunch I had an octopus stew at Steven's (Greek restaurant) in Boston Back Bay that was superb.

[BretWeir]

Buffalo is good, but get it rare -- it dries out fast.

If you can find and old-school Italian place that cooks it right, tripe can be pretty delicious.

I like ostrich, but only when it comes wrapped in bacon.

[miajag]

+1 for the alligator recommendation. I've had it both fried (just OK) and grilled in a fajita (AWESOME). Grilled, it has the flavor of dark meat chicken but the consistency/mouthfeel of steak. Very good imo.