Feet Night!

The Thai place I tend bar at feeds us dinner every night at the end of the shift. Now before I say anything else about tonight's post-shift dinner, allow me to say that I'm a pretty fair foodie and a pretty fair cook as well. I do tend to favor Japanese food and sushi over Thai food - I've got some very good reasons for that, none of which I'll share in this post.

At about 8:45 tonight, Dave, one of our servers, comes up to the bar and says he needs me to do him a favor. "Sure - whaddya need man?" I say.

"I need you to go right now and take a look at what they made us for dinner tonight - and be sure you take a good whiff of it!" I rather doubt that I'll be surprised really, because these days I'm less and less surprised by what I see at work. I head towards the kitchen, wondering what's in store for us for dinner.

I've been at this place, which I jokingly refer to as "House of MSG", for about a year and a half. I've seen some employee meals that made me feel like I was in a flippin' Unicef commercial - "Please send money now - you can make a difference in someone's life today for just pennies a month." - and I've passed on quite a few of those. I'll either buy something off the menu, go someplace to eat after work, or make something at home. I am not a man who eats things that don't look good. Yeah, I said it.

I go back to the kitchen and Dave is over my shoulder : "Those are FEET!"

Yes, that's exactly what I see a huge bowl of. A big bowl filled with chicken feet. It looks like the feet are sauced with a sweet brown sauce that is used for General Tso's or Sesame chicken, and a few of the dried hot red peppers are scattered over them. As a friend's father used to say, you can't polish a turd. Nothing could make tonight's staff meal appealing for me - except maybe a week without food.

"Yes they are" I calmly reply. In my mind I'm thinking, what THE fuck???

How do I put this delicately? No thanks. One of our cooks (I hate to use the term "Chef" at this place) asks me why I don't want to eat them and then cross-references them with something I won't repeat here.

Again, I know the culture is different - but so is the soil you're standing on in the country you chose to come to, America. I'm sorry, but if chicken feet were so damn good you would see more chicken feet places than burger joints. If chicken feet were so damn good, bars and restaurants would have "Feet Night" instead of "Wing Night" - guess what? They don't !

I've tried some things I never thought I'd try, and some of those things I've liked - but Andrew Zimmern I'm not. Perhaps a little nod to Dr. Seuss:

I will not have those chicken feet
Those are not what I will eat

I do not care how you will fry
these feet you will not make me try

I'm hungry yes, the hour is late
but do not put those on my plate

...uhm, yeah, that's about enough on that one huh?