Dog Testicles Are The Best Part

After work yesterday a bunch of us were planning on going to eat duck. Tasha, one of the Korean teachers, had arranged the whole thing and been talking up this mud-baked delicacy for days. Well, on Friday people started to bail. One wanted 'to go buy a phone card.' Another had 'errands.' By quitting time there were only three people still in, myself included.

I still wanted to go, and I think the other white person did, too, but Tasha didn't. So we cancelled the duck.

"You know," Tasha said to me as we were all getting ready to go our separate ways. "There's a restaurant in my neighborhood that serves that kind of food you want to try..." Notice the roundabout phrasing, as if she doesn't want to be the first one to say 'let's eat dog!' Koreans are a little bashful about the whole thing, at least at first...

"You mean dog?" I asked.

"Yes...let me call my husband and see if he can meet us there."

That accomplished, and after having given an overly positive answer through Tasha to the husband who asked 'can he drink soju?', Tasha and I set out (in her car) for some dark corner of Bucheon where they slice open man's best friend and devour him.

The restaurant was busy. It was clean and tidy, there weren't any mutts hanging by their tails in the window. The people all looked reasonably sane. Children chased each other around the tables.

We removed our shoes and sat down at a table off in a corner. Tasha and I arrived first, her husband came in a few minutes later, carrying their 11 month old with him. He (the husband...whose name I can't remember) was one of those rugged urban types, ya know, with the long hair tied back in a pony tail and the cigarettes in the shirt pocket. He looked like he spent his days in a studio tossing buckets of paint at an enormous canvas. He didn't have much to say. He told me dog meat supposedly counters the effects of soju, which would be important that evening.

They brought out the kimchi and other side dishes first. I dug into the radish kimchi, so much so that later in the evening the husband (who only knew a little English, but it was still more Korean than I know) attempted to ask me 'you....like...' I said yes, of course, though the answer is still no (though I am warming up to the stuff). Actually I was just trying to fill my stomach up with something, because I had no idea what was coming. And the kimchi was pretty good, it wasn't overly spicy...I've heard you can judge the quality of a Korean restaurant by the quality of the kimchi, so maybe I was in one of the premier dog places.

Next came the big bowl of soup which they put down in the middle of the table and which everyone shares. It was ok, also not too spicy.

Then came the main course. Tasha ordered some sort of 'very young' (as she put it) chicken, which was excellent. I would've liked more of that. Her husband and I had the dog to share.

It was served in cutlets...it sort of looked like strips of bacon, only a little bulkier and brown. It was very close to raw, in fact, it may have been raw, I honestly don't know because by that time we were on our 3rd bottle of soju and I wasn't thinking about that sort of thing. The meat itself was just a thin strip on the top of the cutlet, there were big globs of fat attached below.

The taste, the taste...was not something you'd write home about. There was very little flavor at all. The meat was very chewy, but what made getting it down wasn't the chewiness, or the thought that occasionally popped into my head 'Christ I'm eating dog,' but rather it was the fat on the meat that was so disgusting. Take a handful of fat from any digestible animal, pig cow or dog and shove it in your mouth and tell me if you like it.

I helped myself, and probably had six or seven pieces. Even if I don't like something in a situation like that I'm not going to refuse it. And I thought I was representing myself pretty well.

Then they brought out the balls. I think the husband ordered more because he saw I was enjoying my dog so much. He takes his chopsticks, points at this round piece of something on the new plate, gives me a wicked grin and says ''

"What?" I asked.

He said it again. Tasha had to translate, but by now I had it figured out. She did an admirable job "this is the part of the dog that...hm...how do you say..."

"The sensitive area?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Balls."

"Yes, balls."

Well, fuck it, I though, I didn't come all this way to avoid eating balls. I tried it. Twice. And let me tell you dear reader, dog testicles really are the best part. They almost taste like chicken, they have actual substance (unlike the fatty meat we'd been consuming) and I can almost recommend them.

After that was eaten there were no more challenges to overcome. I didn't have to eat dog eye, or brains, or toenail, or whatever. An hour or two and a lot of soju later, Tasha and her husband pushed me into a cab and sent me home. I had big plans for the evening of hanging out with the duck avoiders and bragging about my dog experience, but when I went up to my apartment I collapsed and passed out. Too much soju. Not enough dog.