Offal

[Caucus]

Best place for offal? Passing thru for 2 nights.

[borntolovefood]

A dish called "Royal Throat" turned out to be the weirdest thing I have eaten. Not esophogus, not trachea, but beef ascending aorta.

It was prepared SiChuan-style. Ma and la, with the aorta stirred-fried to a crispy texture. .

[mookleknuck]

Mmm, that sounds delicious; where was this and how long ago was it?

[borntolovefood]

R & Z's Ping Pong. Last night.

[mookleknuck]

Yum, was that on their nightly specials? I've been meaning to go again!

The relevant threads:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/834159
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/855754

[barryg]

Just saw Kennett advertising these weekend specials on Facebook:

1)Lamb Testis, with wild leeks, dandellion greens and capers;
2)Calf's head salad with nettles;
3)Venison sauge, duck egg and spicy yogurt with pita;
4)for dessert we have cardamom and orange panacotta
5) and blackberry and almond tart with apricot sorbet!

[barryg]

Peter McAndrews' new place has some good stuff for offal lovers... tripe, tongue, calve's foot, lamb intestines.

http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/mealti...

[Delucacheesemonger]

Thanks for this, as soon as back to Phila, this will be my first stop.

[Delucacheesemonger]

Modo Mio will make tripe as many ways as you can 'stomach' it, just call ahead.

[barryg]

The chicken liver sandwich, The Liveracce, at Paesano's is also very good though quite rich.

They have a great rustic tripe dish at Le Virtu. Tender tripe in a tomato sauce, served with grilled bread. It's an appetizer but big and hearty enough for a medium-sized meal.

Tripe, liver, and blood cubes are abundant at the South Philly Vietnamese places. Café Châu is generous with the cubes in the Bun Bo Hue and some other soups. They and the Cambodian spots a little further down, New Phnom Penh and Heng Seng, serve pork liver as part of their Hu Tieu Nam Vang. At Heng Seng the soup also comes with a pork shank you can eat the marrow out of.

[cwdonald]

Duck hearts at Zahav are very good. And I have great lamb's tongue both at Amis and Osteria.

[barryg]

Speaking of tongue, there are some good lengua tacos around in South Philly too (along with some bad ones), I usually get them at El Paisita near 8th & Snyder but the other stuff is hit or miss. Not sure who has the best ones closer to Center City.

Not sure if its on the current menu at Modo Mio but the calf's tongue dish I had there some time ago was fantastic. Famous 4th St Deli has good deli style tongue. They also have traditional kishka though I haven't tried it. I know I had calf's tongue somewhere else recently too but I can't remember where. Farmer's Cabinet was serving smoked beef tongue as charcuterie, might still be.

Nan Zhou noodle house has a crispy pig ear appetizer, I haven't tried it but its supposed to be good. Alla Spina has pig tails.

South Philly Tap Room always has headcheese tacos on the specials list and occasionally has grilled duck hearts which are excellent. I've also had sweetbread tacos there that were very good.

More tacos, Los Taquitos de Puebla makes tacos from basically every part of the cow head (except for brain)--tongue, mouth and eye.

943 in the Italian Market has great grilled sweetbreads and blood sausage. Zahav also has a unique fried crispy sweetbreads dish served in a paper cone.

Got on a little bit of a roll there once I thought about it...

[purplesachi]

yup - liveracce is quite good at paesano's, and i'd agree with barry - it's rich. i believe it also has blue cheese on it too.

i know that han dynasty has a beef and tripe in chili oil sauce, as well as the beef tendon in chili oil sauce. the tendon is outstanding, and probably one of my favorite things at HD.

[cwdonald]

If you are coming through this week............ Matyson is having a special tasting that features offal including head cheese, brain, pork liver and gizzards. March 12-17.

http://matyson.com/tasting.html

[purplesachi]

i tried the tasting menu last night. the headcheese was probably the best thing on the tasting menu, though, everything was good except for the pork liver. the texture was meh, and seemed a little undercooked to me. all in all, another good tasting menu from matyson.

[borntolovefood]

Had the tasting menu at Matyson Wednesday night. Agree with "perplesachi" in general. The only exception is our least favorites: I did not like the rabbit kidneys that much and that's the only item I left on the plate half eaten.

Most Chinese restaurants serve some kind of offal dishes - intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys. Many of the dishes are quite tasty.

[Caucus]

Ended up at Matyson. I agree that the rabbit kidneys were not anything special.

[cwdonald]

Caucus did you get the tasting menu? I didn't originally see rabbit kidney. Did they substitute those for the brains?

Here is one version of the menu from grubstreet. http://tinyurl.com/6qrsekh

[wajima01]

the kidneys on that dish were ok. but the duck tongues were great