News That Stays News

Mystery soup June 28, 2013

June 6, 2013

Lunch today was a lemony soup filled with carrots, zucchini, and a special ingredient: thin triangular pieces of some sort of animal. They all had one smooth side and one dark yellow fuzzy-looking side. This, I was told by the cook (who speaks about as much English as I do Spanish) was mondogo. As this meant exactly nothing to me, I nodded and told myself it was protein.

The soup on the whole was delicious. The animal bits tasted like the broth: they were chewy, slippery bits of lemon-flavored protein. As I ate, I tried to guess what it was. Despite their appearance, the deep yellow sides weren’t fuzzy, just squishy. Somehow, I became convinced that they might be the floppy ears of something—maybe cows or pigs. I ate another bit.

Then the only other gringo researcher here at the moment arrived at the table.

“I know I’m going to regret this,” I said, holding up a forkful of the mystery meat. “But what is this, exactly?”

“Oh, they call that mondogo. It’s tripe,” she said. And just in case that wasn’t clear enough, “Stomach pieces.” I put the mondogo down and went after a carrot instead.

Finally, I told myself I should have at least one more bite now that I knew what it was. I cut a piece, started chewing, gagged halfway through, and quickly swallowed it. I have no idea why knowing it was tripe instead of thinking that it might be cow’s ears made such a big difference. But it did, even though it still tasted delicious.