Fernet Branca, the carnivore's best friend

The night of our first real meat binge in Buenos Aires was a sleepless one.

Maybe meat is always like this, or maybe it was just my body in shock, but the meat sat like a rock in my stomach for hours. It was a very unpleasant feeling that I've become accustomed to lately. Meat makes you feel full. Those Atkins people have been telling us that for years. What I didn't realize is how long it takes to digest. Hours and hours.

And yet, it tastes so good that I'm willing to put up with a few hours of discomfort afterward. That's where Fernet comes in.

If you don't live in San Francisco (or Italy), maybe you haven't heard of it. It's a digestif. Some say that it tastes like Jaegermeister without the sugar. I don't really agree. But people seem to either really love or really hate this stuff. Thankfully I am in the former camp, because it works a magic on the digestive system that pharmaceutical companies could only dream of emulating.

Fernet is painfully trendy in San Francisco. Bartenders drink it. It is a drink for those in the know. Whatever. I like how it tastes (like licorice mixed with Underberg topped with a Ricola garnish) and it cuts through a pile of meat in your gut like nobody's business. A shot or two of Fernet, and you can get up and walk again.

I only hope that it becomes trendy in more places. I have tried to order it recently in Boston, Chicago, Washington, DC and Florida. What I got were puzzled looks from bartenders instead. Sambuca makes a poor substitute. As does congnac. (But they'll do in a pinch.)

Consider this a public service announcement. If you eat copious amounts of meat and can stand the taste of herby-licoricey alcohol, do yourself a favor and get your local bar to carry at least a bottle or two of Fernet Branca.

Meat Taboos & Thit Cho

I remember watching David Letterman one night years ago, probably when I was still in college. Julia Child was on the show and she was doing a cooking demonstration. She was hacking away at a duck.

She squawked, "You know, this method also works very well with baby seal."

Letterman nearly choked. "Baby seal? Jeez, Julia, what are you, some kind of monster?"

"What's the difference between a duck and seal?" she asked, still hacking away at the duck.

Fair point. What is the difference between a duck and seal? Or a dog and pig? Or a horse and a cow? Why do people think squirrels are cute but they run screaming from rats? Why is it okay to eat rabbit but not cat? Where do we get this stuff from?

And yet, most people don't seem to think about this much at all. Maybe I spend too much time thinking about it. Maybe I'm the one with the problem, not everyone else.

A few years ago, in our pre-carnivore days, my husband & I went to Vietnam. Now I had heard that they eat dogs in Vietnam. I prepared myself for this. I memorized the word for it (thit cho) so I could make sure we didn't accidentally wander into a dog restaurant. After human, probably no meat strikes more fear in the hearts of Americans that the thought of eating dog meat.

Anyway, although I wasn't surprised to find dog meat served in Vietnam, I was surprised to see that many Vietnamese people also keep dogs as pets. And I'm not talking about some scruffy guard dog chained to someone's fence. I mean floofy little dogs with shiny pink collars and little sweaters. That kind of pet.

So I was curious as to how people rectify that. How do you spend the day snuggling with your pet dog, and be okay with the fact that there's a thit cho joint just down the road? I was lucky to meet up with a Vietnamese colleague and after a couple of beers, we asked her.

"Easy," she explained. "See that dog? That's an eating dog."

And that was it. The wild-looking dogs with the pointy ears are for eating, and the others are for dressing up in little sweaters and cuddling with. Simple.

I guess meat taboos don't have to make sense. Everyone has their own. So if I'm okay with eating pig but not rabbit, alligator but not turtle, well, I guess I shouldn't lose sleep trying to justify it.


Note: I should mention here, before you go hiding Fido from your Vietnamese neighbors, that while dog is eaten in Vietnam, not all Vietnamese people eat dog. And it's not an everyday dish. It's expensive, and it is for special occasions. No one is ever going to serve you dog in place of another meat, give it to you by accident or roast your dog for the neighborhood block party.

Memphis Minnie's

"Ohmyfuckingod"

Jason had just tasted his first bbq rib.

"Is it good, honey?"

"Fuck!

"Yeah, mine's good too."

Jason was buried in his plate. He looked euphoric. I thought his eyes were going to roll into the back of his head. I felt the same way. We had a new drug, and its name was pork.

Ordering had been quite an ordeal. Behind us was a group of Japanese tourists, clutching a guidebook. I don't know which of us was more confused by the menu.

"Ummm, we're new to this meat-eating thing. What kind of animal is brisket? What's the difference between a rib tip and a tri tip? Is smoked pork the same thing as pulled pork?"

We were totally clueless. It felt weird. Exciting. Exotic. Like being in a foreign country. I'd been on this stretch of Lower Haight a thousand times, and I don't think I ever even noticed that Memphis Minnie's was there.

The food was fantastic. I don't know if it was really fantastic, or just fantastic for a guy who had never had bbq in his whole life and his wife who hadn't had it in about 20 years. I think it was really fantastic, because we've been back a few times since.

The ribs are our favorite. And the brisket. The greens aren't as good as the ones I make (they're too vinegary) but we don't go there for the vegetables. The smoked pork is great too, but it's chopped, not pulled. All in all, it's the best bbq you are going to find in San Francisco; the staff take this food seriously and seem to love what they do.

While we were eating there that first night, I was struck by how happy and enthusiastic the other patrons of the restaurant were. Everyone was chatting, passing bottles of hot sauce back and forth.

"Have you guys tried this one? It's amazing!"

There was a comaradarie among these carnivores, a conviviality that I had never experienced at say, Herbivore. Meat eaters are just more laid back, it seems. A little less concerned about what people think of them. They welcomed us into the fold.

Afterward we went to Molotov's for a shot of Fernet, to help us digest all that flesh. They had Reagan Youth on the jukebox. I played the whole album. Reagan Youth and bbq ribs all in one night! I felt like I was 17 again, and it was good.

Memphis Minnie's BBQ
576 Haight St. @ Fillmore
http://www.memphisminnies.com/

Secret Meatings

We did it. We broke the New Rules. We at meat, at home, in San Francisco. Well, now that we were going to burn in vegetarian hell, we might as well have fun with it.

I don't know about Jason, but I kinda always imagined that SOMEDAY I would eat meat again. I imagined myself as an old woman, eating loads of meat and having three-martini lunches. I kept little mental notes about what I'd like to eat if I did eat meat. I would think things like "If I ever eat meat again, I'm going to try that taco truck." Or "If I ever eat meat again, I'm going to fly to Philadelphia and get a cheesesteak."

So, as far as I was concerned, someday was here. Time to indulge our meat fantasies. But while we fessed up to our friends about tasting meat in Argentina, we were not ready to "out" ourselves as full-time carnivores just yet. Instead, we started having secret meat dates.

I think we really had two important things to accomplish:

1) Eat meat memories from our childhoods

2) Try all the meat things that we never even knew existed back when we ate meat...like bahn mi and tacos al pastor.

My mom was a South Philly Italian, and I grew up in multi-culti south Florida, so I had lots of meat memories that I wanted to catch up on - hoagies, macaroni with pork gravy, escarole soup with chicken broth, Jamaican meat patties, matzoh ball soup, Cuban picadillo, salami and more salami ...

Jason grew up in Ireland in the 70's & 80's, so his meat memories weren't quite as warm and fuzzy as mine. Although he wanted to eat some lamb (something I'd never had), pretty much all of it was new to him.

So, for our first official secret meat date, I took Jason for his first taste of real southern bbq.

The Downward Spiral, Part 3

So I know what you're thinking, yeah yeah, you had some beef in Argentina and you never looked back. You caved and started eating the hot dogs you bought for the dog.

No, that's not what happened. We returned to our normal life and our normal diet Rules. It was fine. For about a year.

Then sometime in the middle of 2006, I decided that we needed to try Korean food. We are enthusiastic San Francisco restaurant-goers, and we've tried just about every ethnic cuisine we can get our hands on. But for some reason, we never tried Korean. I guess we just thought it was all meat. But I'd read a review of New Korea House in Japantown and it talked about tofu soup and oyster pancakes, so we figured it would be a good place to try, with enough things we could eat.

We weren't prepared for the assault on our senses when we walked in. The smell of grilling meat nearly knocks you over from the minute you cross the threshold. And it smelled good.

We sat down and looked at the menu. We decided on a spicy crab soup and bbq shrimp. The waiter came to take our order.

Waiter: "Minimum two orders to bbq at the table."


Me: "Oh, sorry, we didn't realize. What should we do honey? Two orders of shrimp? There's nothing else here we can eat."

Jason: "Let's get the beef."

Me: "What? Really? Are you serious?"

Jason: "It looks really good. Everyone else is eating it."

The poor waiter stood there, while we hashed out our ethical crisis. He wasn't amused.

Jason: "We'll have the beef too."

Me: "You're eating it. Not me."

Okay, now you know what happened next. The beef came to the table, and it wasn't scary at all. It was fabulous. It was marinated and slightly sweet, and sliced very thin. We grilled it at the table and ate it with all the lovely kimchi and banchan that came with it. The shrimp were good too. And the spicy crab soup was sinus-clearingly delicious.

The meat had a weird effect on us. We were giddy. We drank beer and grilled meat, and all around us people were drinking beer and grilling meat and it was fun.

We started rationalizing again. Okay, this was bad. This is not organic meat. Who knows what kind of meat this is? But we're in Japantown. At a Korean restaurant. That's almost like traveling. That's almost like the New Rules.

We felt like little kids. Little kids with a secret.

New Korea House
1620 Post @ Buchanan

The Downward Spiral, Part 2

So Jason & I boarded our plane in Argentina,with our dirty little secret and a pound or so of beef lodged in our large intestines. What would we do when we got home to San Francisco? It was all so deliciously forbidden. Would we tell our friends? Would the lure of meat be too strong?

Surprisingly, no, it wasn't. After coming home, the whole meat-binge adventure seemed more like a dream. We eventually fessed up to our friends - the carnivores congratulated us, and the veggies just shook their heads. But back in our old veggie-friendly surroundings, it was easy to fall right back into our old way of eating. We started eating by the Rules again.

But something more subtle was happening to us, and I blame the dog. About six months before we went to Argentina, we adopted the world's most adorable mutt puppy from SF Animal Care & Control. We named her Stella, like the beer.

Getting a puppy was a huge step that impacted so many parts of our lifestyle. We had a little life in our hands now. We crate trained, we went to puppy classes, we raced home from work to walk her, and suddenly, we had meat in our refrigerator.

Trying to be the best puppy parents we could be, we shelled out for Natural Balance dog food. If you are unfamiliar with this stuff, it looks like a big salami. Mmmmm, salami. You have to store it in the refrigerator, and you have to cut it up yourself. With a knife.

At first, I was completely disgusted. The dog food had its own shelf in the fridge. I had a special knife for the dog food. I had a special cutting board for the dog food which I covered with paper towels, just for good measure, so the meat wouldn't touch any of our food. I wiped up the crumbs with a special sponge. Besides the Natural Balance, we bought other meat products, on the advice of the dog trainers. Hot dogs. Ewww. Hot dogs in our fridge. I hope none of our friends come over and see them in there and think we're eating them.

But after a year or so, I became desensitized to the meat. It started sitting on the shelf with the rest of our food. The special knife was forgotton. I even used our forks to scoop out the canned stuff. It just wasn't disgusting anymore. It was a fact of life. And I guess in some way, this helped to eliminate the 'yuck' factor when I eventually did make the transition from semi-veggie to full-on meat eater.

Is it ironic that I am blaming an animal for making me a carnivore? I don't know. But I do know that Stella is really really happy when we cook bacon.

Regrets, I've had a few

New rules - we'll eat meat while traveling if it is part of the cultural experience.

But, oh, the things we've already missed. We tasted no pho in Hanoi, no ham in Madrid, no jerk chicken in Jamaica, and no mole in Oaxaca. Here I am, the most food-obsessed person I know and I have missed out on all of these great things. And the worst regret of all? Japan.

You would think that a pescatarian would do alright in Japan. You'd be wrong. The Japanese like to sneak meat into even the most vegetarian-looking foods. So we probably should have known better before we set off looking for what the guidebook called the oldest-best-most revered ramen noodle shop in Tokyo.

Suffice it to say that Tokyo is not an easy city to navigate if you are a lost westerner with zero knowlege of Japanese and only a minimal guidebook map. We set off at noon, to have lunch at the famous ramen shop. After about 2 hours, we were starving and ordered some noodles from a street vendor to tide us over. A few more hours passed, and we were still wandering - lost - in the general neighborhood of the ramen shop. We're fighting. Our feet hurt. We're cold. But we are not giving up. We have spent so much time and we are so close, we have to find this place.

We find a bar instead. We drink beer and feel better. They offer us some little snacks. No, thank you. We are looking for ramen.

Off we go. It's now dark. Lunch has turned into dinner. We have been circling the same neighborhood for over FIVE hours now looking for the noodles. Finally a kind stranger takes pity on us and leads us by the hand to the shop which, I'm sorry Lonely Planet, NO ONE could possibly find with the crappy map you provided.

Ha. We're here. We've settled in. Food at last. What's that? Oh, it's all pork broth?

We left.

LEFT!!! What the hell was wrong with us?