Trippa

For some reason local dishes come up every time I'm chatting with my roommates, and they've been very good about letting me know what I should sample while out and about-- the cappuccino down the street, the brioche and gelato across the way, the cacio e pepe near work, and the one dish everyone seems to fear: tripe. I know we've discussed tripe on three separate occasions, but I promptly forget the ingredients, as one is much better off thinking of espresso and pizza than things like tripe.

Saturday evening we ended up at a party with a buffet, and someone suggested I try the local dish in the brown bowl. I was all "when in rome" and got in line. As I was putting some on my plate an Italian woman looked at me and said "brava! mangia!"... I have two interpretations of this event: either she was excited I was trying something as disgusting as tripe, or she was mad that I took the spoon-- sarcasm in other languages is difficult.

I handed off the serving utensil, consumed my tripe and then asked the roommate what exactly I had put in my mouth. And with his response I can safely say I won't be eating it again. Tripe has the charm and texture of raw chicken skins in a nice tomato sauce. All I could think of was an episode of Taste of America about chitlins . The tag line was "Martha Lou's Chitlins, 100% poo free!".

Here's hoping the same sort of quality control for the Roma version.