Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

C'est veritable...

There are times when my urge to try new foods gets the better of me, like the time I ordered 'mixed meat fried noodles' in an unfashionable restaurant in Chinatown. After ten minutes of chewing on unidentifiable orange things that were alternately chewy or distressingly crunchy I had to admit defeat.
Last night, en-route to Calais from the Avignon festival, my curiosity was piqued by the menu item: veritables andouillettes des Troyes, translated as regional speciality (I was in Troyes), tripe sausage. I like sausage, and under certain circumstances, tripe, so I thought I'd give it a go. The waitress looked dubiously at me; 'are you sure? it is very special.'
Why not, I thought, how special can it be? The answer, when it was borne, wobbling and pulsating to my table, was very special. It looked like something that had been hacked off a '70's Dr Who monster (one of the rubbery sea-monster type), and there was a powerful and unmistakeable whiff of the barnyard about it. The texture was somewhere between inner tube and ox tongue, and the flavour of the farm lingered long after.
Not only that, because I was obvious the first person to order this dish for decades, they gave me an especially huge portion to celebrate making some room in the fridge at last. I ate as much as I could manage, but there was still a couple of reproachful inches of wobbliness on my plate when the waitress cleared my plate. I noted that she didn't ask me how I'd enjoyed my meal, and regretted the absence of a friendly Labrador, to whom I suspect, this dish would have been as manna from heaven.

posted by Lampy @ 7/29/2012 02:06:00 pm