Food Faux Pas 3.

Lamb / Turkey Fries – USA.

I met up with her in Louisville. We both had arrived independently there on Greyhound or some other line. I don’t remember using a train at the time. Anyway we decided to buy a car together and then just drive it south – sell it in Venezuela or anywhere else it would take us. The first night in some motel I discovered a half full bottle of Tennessee Jack or some other god awful puggle, which had slipped behind the dressing table in the cabin. It could be piss, she reminded me but by exercising at least three of my limited five senses it turned out not to be.

The car was crap and we decided to head north instead and and the weather began to turn bad and the roads got worse and the first thing I noticed was that everyone drove a station wagon, what in Australia we call a ute. But what we had bought was a lame duck of an aging saloon car, certainly not suited to off-road conditions.

The other odd thing – for me –  was that most of the wagons had a shotgun or rifle in a holder on their back windscreen. In the gas stations where we would stop to fill up we were inspected with dull indifference but I noticed cold six-packs of beer were readily available as well as gas and ammo. Great, I thought, I’ll have a six pack of Ballantyne’s Ale, the one with the rebus inside the cap.

Somewhere in the misty mountains as evening drew in, we pulled into a service area – gas, motel, general store. Quiet, pleasant, backwoods, that sort of thing. There were scatted groups of people inside the diner, along the counter or in small shallow booths off to the side and we managed to get a table at the side just for two. 

Nancy, her name badge proclaimed, a large, overweight woman, her welcoming smile threatening to engulf us, was more than effusive presenting us with menus even bigger than her smile.

At this stage I was fairly confident with the contents of most American restaurants and diners but here was something new for me. ‘’Sorry what are these things?’ I pointed at the menu where a speciality of the house was Lamb Fries.

Oh, you know, she paused and some of her smile faltered. 

Sorry, I don’t know what you mean. It’s not like Peking Duck, is it?

She shook her head. It’s, you know, from the lamb when they are young and … – she gestured vaguely at the table.

So, it is actually lamb, is it? Not fish or something like that? 

Perplexed, her smile almost gone, our waitress called over her shoulder and Mabel came out to join us.

This gentleman here wants to know what exactly this here means – and she jabbed her finger at the menu on the table. Mabel tightened the strings of her apron behind her back a bit more firmly before coming to crowd over the table.

Sorry, I don’t meant to be troublesome but it is just that I don’t quite understand what this …’

You-all not from around here then? Mabel deduced, you folks are from where?

When I told her there were gasps of surprised, whoops for Frank who emerged from the kitchen to see what all the noise was about. Rather like a barrel but with similarly proportioned arms and legs, Frank, judging from the heavy wooden, rolling pin he was smacking into the open palm of his other hand, wasn’t happy either.

What’s all this ruckus about? He demanded while Mabel started off on ‘When Irish eyes are smiling …’ and the other lady explained that I was from the Old Country and might know some of Frank’s family.

Dropping the rolling pin on the table, wiping his meaty hands on his soiled apron, Frank shook hands warmly and then embraced me tightly. “Isn’t that how they do it back in the old country, you know?

The other lady, her full smile back in place told Frank that I did not know what lamb fries are.

Almost man-handled behind the counter and into the kitchen by a jovial Frank, he opened a chest freezer and hauled out a plastic sack of frozen globules criss-crossed with what looked like red and blue lines. 

These ‘ins here are lamb fries, yep, we cut the nuts off the little fellas and fry ‘em up an’ they just melt in your mouth. See, and these one here, Frank boasted, holding up another gory sack of testicles, are Turkey Fries. Some people call ‘em prairie oysters.

I nodded enthusiastically Yes, oysters, off the west coast of Ireland, delicious, slip down the throat, I managed to agree before grandly suggesting a beer or two back outside inside the restaurant proper. Mindful of the assorted rifles and shotguns everyone seemed to have in this particular neck of the woods, I wisely settled for my old friend at this stage, the cheeseburger.