In Fayetteville, there’s a mexican restaurant (that my mother used to drag me to all the time) called Jose’s. It’s a staple of Fayetteville and especially of Dickson Street. Over the years, Joe, the owner, would be the voice talent for their radio spots... why not. He coined the phrase, “Ole for Jose’s,” which, I think, still lives at the very end of every radio spot you hear for them. A few years ago, after I had moved to Kansas City, I heard about his latest radio spot about chimichangas. Yes, good ol’ Joe had created another catch phrase, “chimichanga, chimichanga, chimichanga.”
Enough about Jose’s, but speaking of chimichanga...
A group of co-workers and I went down to Taqueria Mexico today for lunch. I love this place (see, I told you I do), their food is so damn good. After today, I’m not so sure how much love for them will last.
Halfway through a meal of beef chimichanga, a co-worker discovered something odd in the tortilla. When she asked several of us what it was, we all replied that it was just a part of the tortilla that didn’t get deep fried. She wasn’t satisfied with that answer, and neither were we when the poked at it with her fork and it sprung back and forth like those door stopper things that make the cool boing noise when you flick them.
None of us knew what it was and she stopped eating. After making several jokes about what it could be and then singing the pre-chorus to Weezer’s “Holiday,” I decided to go ask the wait staff what it was.
After a few minutes of discussion, we all concluded that the thing (that was now on my plate) was a corazón – that’s "heart" in English. She had a chicken heart in her BEEF chimichanga. Gross. GROSS!
You couldn’t really say that her heart was in the right place. Nor did she get heart burn. The meal wasn’t too hearty, but, it WAS a heart-felt situation. Someone already asked if she ate her heart out... no, she didn’t. Okay, stop.
+ original post date: October 28, 2005 01:55 PM
+ categories: Family/Friends, KC, WTF, Work
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What did the wait staff say???? They could have at least had a heart and told her the truth! Gah, what chickens!
+ author: bev
+ posted: October 28, 2005 04:51 PM
Poor Tony Snethen found a large winged insect cooked into one of his stir-fried meals at Oriental Feast (aka Wong's) a few weeks ago and hasn't been back since. It hasn't stopped me though... there's no way to keep all the bugs out of the food all of the time. I once found a centipede cooked into one of my meals at another restaurant, I just ate around it.
My two grossest experiences with unexpected surprises in food have been in the past few months:
(1) I got a hot chocolate at a rest area vending machine in Iowa. As I was drinking it I got a nice declisious lump of undissolved cocoa powder in my mouth. I was about to bite down on it when I noticed it didn't taste very sweet. I spat it into my hand to see why and discovered it was a dead green flying insect instead.
(2) I bought some pistacios from al-Habashi in the City Market and had been cracking them open and popping them at work. I enjoyed how particularly moist some of these pistacios were. I had eaten probably half a pound over the course of several days before I opened one up and saw a green worm inside happily chewing away at the nut inside. I cracked open several more and discovered that about 1 in 10 had a worm inside. Which meant that 10% of the nuts I had eaten already had a worm on 'em too. No wonder they were so moist. I was a little revolted and decided to pitch the rest of the nuts. I'll have to be a little more careful about what I buy from open-air markets.
+ author: ScooterJ
+ posted: November 3, 2005 05:42 AM
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