It's one thing to think "damn" if you write about food, and a leading Southern culinary authority goes and kills it on the Twitter; it's another when America's favorite college football blogger dunks on you in your own gym. Somebody let Spencer "EDSBS" Hall out of the basement where he allegedly writes about sports, and took him to Babbo:
Sweetbreads. I’m not a complete and loyal gut-meat enthusiast. When
you put tripe into the steaming broth of pho, guess what? It still
tastes like tripe, but now it’s in the middle of my otherwise delicious
Vietnamese productivity gruel. (The thin slices of ligament, though,
are choice: they add a silkiness to the broth that even non part-lovers
have to admit is delicious.)
Sweetbreads, however, should enjoy their own kind of special
categorical exemption for anyone so squeamish about meat that they like
to think it comes in whole slices pre-wrapped. The sweetbread is the
thymus gland of a cow located in the neck, meaning not only are you
eating something that’s not only organ meat, but could conceivably be
ripped directly from the throat of the cow if you were properly
possessed by the spirit of demonic carnivorous hunger. (KALI-MAAAAAH!!!)
Surprisingly, it’s one of the most succulent, tender meats you’ll
ever destroy on a plate, and if you get a chance to once in your
miserable, short, and brutish life, go to Babbo in New York and
get theirs. They take the heart section of the sweetbread, roll it in
some kind of magical fennel batter, fry it for a bit, then serve it
with a glaze of balsamic vinegar presumably aged by putting it in
bottles, and then storing it beneath the flawless and protuberant
buttocks of a hundred sleeping naked Italian virgins. They top it with
an afro wig of flash-fried orange zest cut into tiny ribbons, and OH
FUCK IS THAT BACON ON THE BOTTOM. (It was.)
I was drunk out of my mind at that point, and probably rubbing the
remainder of the dish behind my ears in the middle of the restaurant,
but no amount of Primitivo can erase the splendor of this dish.
And Sweetback's theme? Why not?
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