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"FacebookPinterest\n\n\"Excuse me,\" I said repeatedly as I walked across Manhattan's Koreatown, inquiring at likely restaurants, \"do you serve assholes here?\"\n\nI wasn't expecting the obvious reply: \"Of course\u2014come right in.\" They understood immediately what I was seeking, a much loved dish called chicken assholes. To me, they're body parts. To a Korean, they're a culinary connection to home.\n\nWhat binds all people, besides a desire for affordable health care, is a longing for food that is familiar, poignant, and soothing. Immigrants on their way to America leave behind families and friends, and nothing, not even a phone call, reminds them of their native lands as much as the food they once shared. They come here eager to begin a new life, but they would prefer to do so while eating the traditional dishes their grandmothers used to make.\n\nAn outsider can't be expected to understand. Often the food is elemental, as old as the civilization it has come to represent. Does haggis, the most revered dish of Scotland\u2014 a rank assemblage of sheep's liver, lungs, and heart\u2014make sense to anyone who doesn't weep at the sound of a bagpipe? Does corned beef and cabbage resonate with a Pakistani or a Colombian? I grew up eating pickled herring in sour cream, a ridiculous concoction, and I always think of my father when I buy a jar (it has to be Vita) at the supermarket. My wife experiences only disgust when she looks in the refrigerator and sees it hidden in the back.\n\nAlmost all of us have a dish that by smell or taste or its mere presence at the table evokes memories\u2014most famously, Marcel Proust and his teasoaked madeleine and more recently Tony Soprano and his cappicola. I don't shudder like Proust or spasm like James Gandolfini's Soprano when I eat knoblewurst, a potent garlic salami that I affectionately think of as indigestion on rye, but my childhood suddenly seems not far removed, a magical occurrence. On a national scale, there probably isn't a native-born American traveling overseas in November who isn't moved and grateful to be offered a turkey dinner on the fourth Thursday of that month.\n\nQuite often, what newcomers to this country crave is not so different from what all of us appreciate. Chicken soup, for example, exists in almost every culture. It's the exceptions that terrify. Now and then, a restaurant customer will order a dish so bizarre that while he's sighing with pleasure, every other living creature\u2014I'm including rats residing in basements\u2014 scuttles away. Of course, weird dishes don't have to be of foreign origin. We've got some pure American cookery that's mighty strange, as well as some chefs we call our own who have created dishes no normal person should consume.\n\nI went in search of the weirdest food in New York City, which is the weirdest dining city in America. After all, emigrants from nearly 200 countries reside here. I wasn't interested in frivolous food, such as the tube of red tuna with a rice-cracker coating resting by a puddle of salmon-colored sriracha accented with a citrus emulsion that recently appeared in a New York restaurant universally praised by critics. Seeking that sort of silliness would have been too easy, because this is a country where chefs are veering toward artistic extremes. Nor was I after the outrageously absurd, such as the sandwich rumored to be the favorite of the late Luther Vandross\u2014a bacon cheeseburger on a Krispy Kreme doughnut.\n\nI was after the real thing, genuine culture shock. I hoped the dishes I came across would illuminate closed neighborhoods, offer insights into the almost impenetrable minisocieties scattered across New York City. Try asking questions on street corners in Queens, as I have done, and few locals are willing to respond. (Maybe I look a little too much like a member of the Albanian secret police.) Restaurants, on the other hand, are uniquely welcoming places. A stranger departs not only well fed but also, if he is fortunate and can speak the predominant language, which may or may not be English, well-informed.\n\nThe ground rules of my search were simple: I would dine only in restaurants, not in homes or food shops, and the dishes had to be legal. (That meant the ortolan, the prized, innocent, and supremely savory songbird that French president Fran\u00E7ois Mitterrand ate on his deathbed and I ate in Tribeca, didn't count.) I decided to limit the number of dishes I ate in Chinese restaurants, because these places offer virtually everything. You could purchase the entire stock of a pet store, toss every living creature on a grill, and you wouldn't match the potential of a Chinese menu. I put a limit on diverse body parts, too. Once you've dined on a veal kidney, a chicken heart isn't all that different, and once you've had a chicken asshole, why even bother with the heart?\n\nSpeaking of memories, I try always to conduct myself in a manner that would have made my mother proud, but sometimes I am unable to do so. While discovering and sampling the ten weirdest dishes in New York, not once did I clean my plate.\n\nDISH: GUINEA PIG\n\n CUISINE : ECUADORIAN\n\nThe guinea pig, upon arrival, looked angry. At Salinas Restaurant in Brooklyn, guinea pig comes to the table whole, like suckling pig. The profound difference is that a guinea pig is a pet and a suckling pig is not. Imagine the furry little fellow you bought for your kids kidnapped by a fiend, roasted (ideally over a wood-burning fire), and plopped on a bed of boiled potatoes. It wasn't just unhappy. It seemed to be glazed, as though the final culinary touches had been applied at a doughnut shop. One little leg was nearly ripped off. My guest, Akiko Katayama, a frequent judge on Iron Chef America, said happily, \"It looks delicious.\" To me it looked like a scrawny squirrel, at least from the neck down. The head was vaguely humanoid.\n\nGuinea pig, or cuy, is a delicacy in Ecuador, offered to honored guests. At Salinas, a happy spot with a loud jukebox, it's a weekend special costing $30, pretty high considering that a steak goes for $8. When I called and heard there was just one left, I grabbed it, feeling as though I'd gotten the last seats at a Springsteen concert.\n\nKatayama and I started on the skin, which was a little crunchy and very fatty. She loved it so much she started using the Japanese word umami, meaning a special, sensual flavor. She found hints of cheese, fish, Peking duck, and pork skin. I found it tough. The meat, what little there was of it, was strong, salty, and slimy. I imagine that when civilization ends, we'll all be reduced to trapping and tearing at this sort of meat.\n\nThen dinner got worse.\n\nAs I was cutting into the body of the beast, two turd-like bits dropped into the potatoes. I called over our waitress, who spoke almost no English. (Well, we were in Brooklyn.) \"You eat this?\" I asked. She nodded. \"Chungo,\" I thought she said. I ate the chungo, which for all I know means \"turd.\" It was superconcentrated, turdish, organ-like meat. The waitress nodded happily. \"Very good,\" she said.\n\nImmediately after dinner, I felt an urge to get in a cage and scamper around on a little wheel.\n\nDISH: VEAL TESTICLES\n\n CUISINE : TEX-TUSCAN\n\nEvery chef longs to be number one, even Cesare Casella, who has already achieved acclaim as one of New York's foremost interpreters of Tuscan cuisine. His newest accomplishment? \"I think I am the biggest consumer of balls in this country,\" he says. \"Before, I had to special-order them. Now, for me, my supplier keeps them in stock.\"\n\nVeal testicles, called granelli on the menu, are sometimes known as Rocky Mountain oysters. At Maremma, in Manhattan, they are cut into bite-size pieces, coated with a chili-infused flour-and-cornmeal mixture, fried, and served with creamy ranch-style dressing. According to Casella, testicles are commonplace in both Texas and Maremma, the plains of Tuscany, cowboy country. \"In both places, they castrate the cow and eat the balls.\"\n\nIt's hard to tell the exact number of balls per order, since they arrive at the restaurant presliced.\n\nHe believes that veal testicles resemble oysters. I dared him to prove it by eating one raw. He demurred. In fact, they taste like a cross between oysters and sweetbreads: rich, soft, sweet, and appealing. Dipped in the dressing, they could pretty much pass for any extraordinarily tender cut of beef.\n\nCasella claims that every night, at more than half his tables, somebody orders granelli. They are passed around, shared. \"The men don't eat them,\" he says. \"The women, they eat.\"\n\nDISH: SPICY BEEF PENIS\n\n CUISINE : SZECHUAN\n\nPenis, like revenge, is a dish best served cold. At Little Lamb Happy Family Restaurant in Flushing, Queens, penis appears to meet its ultimate fate on a meat-slicing machine, where it is transformed into about three dozen translucent discs the size of pepperoni slices. Each one has a hole in the center, as you might expect. They're chewy and peppery. Without the spices and cilantro garnish, there wouldn't be much to them. They were unremarkable to eat but astounding to gaze upon.\n\nAnother thing. Being a guy, I sort of expected the penis to be beefy. It was not. It did not evoke images of a stomping 2,000-pound rodeo bull.\n\nIt was, in fact, wimpy. Actually, I was grateful for that, since the insubstantial texture seemed to distance it from what it once was, a vibrant symbol of what makes a man a man, or at least what separates a steer from a bull. I was also pleased it wasn't a dog penis or a deer penis, which are also known to emerge from the slaughterhouse that is a Chinese kitchen. Consuming a penis is supposed to increase virility, but I don't get the connection. It's like saying cannibalism is a way to make new friends.\n\nMy straight-faced waiter had no reaction to a non-Asian ordering penis. He spoke little English, so I wasn't able to ask him if Happy Family might not be an inappropriate name for his restaurant.\n\nDISH: TONGUE POLONAISE\n\n CUISINE : JEWISH\n\nNobody adores beef tongue more than my friend Max, who still remembers the tongue sandwiches he ate in Lithuania seventy years ago. When I learned he'd never had tongue polonaise, I told him lunch was on me.\n\nI brought him a take-out order from Manhattan's Pastrami Queen, where the pickled beef tongue is kept upstairs and the sweet-and-sour raisin sauce in the basement. They're put together at the last minute, handled the same way as the lethal components of an atomic weapon.\n\nI ate tongue polonaise as a kid. My mother made it, maybe as a Jewish history lesson, because I suffered through every bite. When Max first tried it, he recoiled. \"What is this?\" he asked in horror and disbelief. My mother told me that tongue polonaise is an old-world specialty that found its way to America; if so, it probably got here before Max. How an Eastern European concoction got such a fancy name\u2014polonaise means \"in the style of Poland\" in French cookbooks\u2014 I couldn't tell you.\n\nI have to say that even for tongue polonaise, this wasn't good. Tongue is a delicacy, prized for its tenderness, and while these slices were properly pink, they were also tough. The sauce, which contained golden raisins, was an improbable reddish orange hue and more sweet than sour. Max's son, David, said, \"In fifty years, I've never seen my father push tongue away.\"\n\nWorse than that, Max put a curse on the dish, saying, \"It tastes goyish.\" There's no greater insult to a plate of tongue than declaring it unfit for a kosher Jew.\n\nDISH: BRAISED SMOTHERED CHITLINS\n\n CUISINE : SOUTHERN\n\nMan, chitlins stink. There's a reason for that: They're hog intestines.\n\nIn the old days, they were cooked outdoors during a hog slaughter, which kept the smell out of the house. I'll bet it was impossible to tell if the grunts and squeals and groans were coming from the pigs being slaughtered or the people eating the chitlins. These (and other) unpleasant pig parts went to slaves because nobody else was interested in them, but an unforeseen consequence was that chitlins became entwined in the vernacular of black society. Musicians performing in black nightclubs were said to be working the Chitlin Circuit.\n\nAt Amy Ruth's, a nice southern restaurant in Harlem, the mother and daughter sitting at the table next to me stopped eating the instant my chitlins arrived. The mother put a napkin over her head, hoping to block the smell. Her brave daughter reached over and took a bite from my plate. \"At least they taste better than they smell,\" she said. Two tables over, tourists from the Netherlands seemed stunned. \"They smell like bad breath,\" one said. Now I understand why the birth rate is falling there.\n\nThe chitlins on my plate were long grayish brown strips, about as ugly as you can imagine. The consistency wasn't bad, firm and chewy. Mid in were strips of green pepper and slices of onion. Astonishingly, neither moderated the odor. You might understand the bouquet if you've ever driven down a rural road, passed a pig farm, and felt your stomach lurch.\n\nDISH: PIG FOOT MILANESE\n\n CUISINE : ITALIAN AMERICAN\n\nJust when you thought there was nothing more an Italian could do to a pig, along came Mario Batali, creator of pig foot milanese. I don't believe this dish exists in nature. Or in Italy.\n\nThe general manager of Manhattan's Babbo, David Lynch, calls it a \"fat-delivery system,\" a brilliant summation. Basically, it is fat cooked in fat. Adding to the pleasure is a coating of bread crumbs, which provide a minor carbohydrate component.\n\nThe term milanese refers to a cooking method, admired in northern Italy, in which a lean, thin piece of veal or pork is coated in crumbs and quickly saut\u00E9ed, giving flavor to what is essentially a dreary slab of protein. Italians, who tend to be sensible, would never saut\u00E9 something that is already fatty. That would be redundant. Batali, of course, is not like many Italians. What he created is the essence of fried fat. Batali boils a pig's foot until the meat, the fat, and the gelatinous stuff fall off the bone. He mashes it flat, then adds a layer of bread crumbs before frying it in oil.\n\nSo simple. So life shortening. The first time I ordered this appetizer, I nearly swooned. It's sure to please gourmands who believe a banana split can benefit from an extra scoop of caramelized walnuts. It's for people who think mere overindulgence isn't enough. Incidentally, pig foot milanese is presented atop a bed of beans, which are good for you. I never bother with the beans.\n\nDISH: BALUT\n\n CUISINE : PHILIPPINE\n\nMark Ronquillo, who is half Filipino, told me this disturbing account of a visit to the Philippines with his father: \"I was probably 7 years old, and I saw him eating these eggs at a backyard party. When I saw what was inside, I was horrified. I ran away.\"\n\nWhat could be inside an egg that would evoke such dread?\n\nWhat else but the unborn?\n\nRonquillo and his wife, Ivy, had joined me at a tiny Manhattan cafeteria called Elvie's Turo-Turo (turo-turo means \"point-point\"). The balut, boiled and looking harmless, sit atop the counter in a bowl. They're actually fertilized duck eggs in which the embryo has been allowed to develop for a little more than two weeks. Inside each egg is embryonic fluid. Drink up. Dig into the solid contents, which vary in appearance, depending on the stage of development. Ivy suddenly stopped picking at hers and gasped, \"Oh, jeez, I got a feather. No, I got a whole friggin' wing.\" Mine seemed to contain a marbleized fetus, an Impressionistic duck.\n\nAs I ate, juice ran down my arm and over my pen. I tossed the pen. I didn't know what to do with the arm. The juice was not awful. It was mild, ducky, and eggy. The flavor of the barely formed creature within was reminiscent of egg, too.\n\nIn the Philippines, balut is a snack food. To some, it's an aphrodisiac. To me, it's tradition run amok, possibly the weirdest dish on earth.\n\nDISH: LES ROGNONS DE VEAU \u00C0 LA MOUTARDE\n\n CUISINE : FRENCH\n\nKidneys are one of those bad culinary ideas the French arrived at long ago. Everybody believes the French can't be wrong where cuisine is concerned, so veal kidneys have become esteemed throughout the world. They might be one of those foodstuffs that emplify the grandeur of the Republic, but in truth they're almost inedible.\n\nI dined at Le P\u00E9rigord in Manhattan because it's old and honored, as are kidneys. The Arc de Triomphe seems young compared with Le P\u00E9rigord. And I have to credit the chef for doing a terrific job. The kidneys, cooked medium-rare, were not rubbery, merely spongy. They were slathered in mustard sauce\u2014 the \u00E0 la moutarde. Most cultures, when forced to consume tough, dry, unpleasant pieces of internal flesh, turn to marinades. The French believe in the culinary coverup, and few sauces are stronger or more effective than one based on mustard. The sauce at Le P\u00E9rigord would have been superb, had it only come with a hot dog.\n\nMy dinner guest, more forgiving than I, philosophized on the meaning of organ meat. She found nobility where I found nonsense. She said of the kidneys, \"Organ meats have depth and complexity but are not easy. You must acquire an appreciation of them, and you have to respect the work the organ has done.\"\n\nI bowed my head in shame.\n\n\"So you're enjoying them?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not at all,\" she replied. \"I had them once before and didn't mind them. That's because my host had selected an excellent wine.\"\n\nAgain, I bowed my head. The inferior red I'd ordered was obliterated by both the hard-to-chomp kidney bits and the mustard sauce.\n\nI couldn't wait for dessert, because Le P\u00E9rigord serves pastries from a cart, the old-fashioned way. Back in Paris, restaurants are making desserts from vegetables, another bad culinary idea that seems to be taking hold.\n\nDISH: DUCK TONGUES IN WINE SAUCE\n\n CUISINE : SHANGHAINESE\n\nDuck tongues in wine sauce come twenty to an order. That's reason enough to switch to pig tongue in wine sauce, which isn't as horrifying or as bountiful. Instead, I nervously licked my lips and plunged ahead.\n\n\"Are you sure you want that?\" wondered the Chinese waiter at Shanghai Tide in Flushing.\n\nI asked if they were a favorite of his. He replied, \"They're not my favorite. I eat burgers. I don't eat strange Chinese dishes.\"\n\nThe cold appetizers in a Shanghainese restaurant resemble specimens in the laboratory of a deranged biologist. They're marinated and smoked and preserved, provisions for some sort of blasphemous feast day. They're the Chinese equivalent of the French amuse-bouche, a means of arousing the appetite. In terms of appearance, temperature, and flavor, they contribute to the essential Chinese concept of a meal as a comprehensive experience. The duck tongues tasted okay\u2014salty, sweet, gingery, garlicky. The crunchy cartilage that runs through each one added a textural component I did not prize.\n\nA cooked duck tongue is about two inches long, thin, bony, and pink. It might as well be a skinned human finger. That's not cuisine; that's forensics.\n\nDISH: CHICKEN ASSHOLES\n\n CUISINE : KOREAN\n\nA Korean friend helping me search for chicken assholes in Manhattan's Koreatown was worried that her translation of t'alk ttong jip was misleading. It doesn't exactly mean \"chicken assholes,\" although that's the preferred definition. Literally, t'alk ttong jip is \"chicken shitholes.\" I told her the first interpretation was vivid enough.\n\nChicken assholes are difficult to find in America, despite their popularity in Korea. There they are comfort food, prepared in homes or sold by street vendors. My friend said, \"I used to love it when my mother made them, because my dad loved them. I didn't know what I was eating at the time.\"\n\nAfter a half-dozen rueful rejections by restaurant owners and hostesses, we got lucky. There they were, on the bar menu at a lounge called City People, where the manager boasted, \"Everybody says our chicken assholes are the best in the city, like at home.\" They were cut into bite-size pieces, sprinkled with sesame seeds, tossed with garlic cloves, and accompanied by sesame greens. The manager wrapped a bit of asshole and a garlic clove in the greenery, blew on it so I wouldn't burn my mouth, told me to open wide, and popped it in. I can't say I was in heaven, but I've known assholes I've liked less.\n\nThey were a little chewy and a little crunchy, requiring about forty chomps to get down, putting them nearly in the bubble-gum category. My friend pronounced them not as good as her mom's. She and the manager had a lively debate over whether t'alk ttong jip was actually the asshole or some organ that collects and stores the sand and grit that a chicken pecks up. The manager drew a picture, and I have to say it reminded me of an asshole, pucker and all."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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