My husband and I have become friends with a Hmong couple who own a thai restaurant. Often when we're they're, the'll bring out foods they're thinking about adding to the menu (or that are on the unspoken menu).
We've found that many ethnic restaurants have a seperate menu for people from the culture. In one Chinese restaurant, my husband started chatting with the owner about a soup that he had had when he worked in a chinese restaurant where he'd eaten a soup made only for the restaurant staff. The woman disappeared and came back with a menu written in chinese, and pointed to a line on the menu. My husband copied down the characters so he would recognize it again.
Today when we were dining at the thai restaurant, and they were talking about how their Hmong friends and customers were asking them why they don't have beef tendon on the menu, so they've begun making it, but it's not on the menu yet. So far, they've only been telling Hmong customers because they're not sure whether it would go over well with caucasians. We were asked if we were willing to give them our input.
Now I'm willing to taste almost anything, and I've had beef tendon in Pho, (pronounced fuh, rhymes with duh. It's a noodle soup), so I said sure.
So they brought out a small bowl of what looked like beef stew (slightly fatty cuts of meat with onions with au jus) over rice. But what I thought was fat wasn't, it was the tendon itself, with good size chunks of meat attached. I expected it to be tough, but it was so tender and wonderful. It had the taste and texture of a truly awesome, melt-in-your-mouth, slow roasted american-seasoned pot roast.
I checked out the calorie count on Daily Plate, and it's only 150 calories for about 3.5 ounces (and it's all protein, not fat).
I know tendon sounds very strange to most non-asians, but this stuff is so awesome. It's a cheap cut of meat (if you can really call it meat), but it has to be cooked forever to be made this tender. It's boiled for three hours and then roasted with onion and seasonings. The main flavor is of beef, onion, and a bit of salt (not even particularly "asian" for folks who don't like oriental flavors, just wonderful pot roast).
I feel like I've "discovered" something so amazing I want to spread the word.
But here's my big question. My husband and I loved it, but we don't know if the name (and what it is) would scare most non-asians. When the owners asked whether we thought if they should put it on the menu, or would it scare people off, perhaps from trying anything on the menu, we didn't know.
So, would you try it? And if not, would seeing it on a menu scare you off of other dishes on the menu (because they might contain something "weird" too)?