Friday night for our weekly dinner with Angel and Eric, we went to a new Japanese-style BBQ place here in Taichung. It was a nice place with a pretty good deal - all you can eat (and drink beer) for $500/person (about $14 USD).
At these kinds of places, each table has it's own charcoal BBQ pit and they bring uncooked meat or seafood to your table and you cook it up yourself.
The cooking part can be a bit troublesome, but it's a fun thing to do once in a while and the food was absolutely fantastic. Angel was our executive chef!
Our feast, which lasted for two hours, began with some shrimp and delicious scallops.
We went on to eat all kinds of things, from fish
(which you must carefully remove the bones from)
...to beef, pork, and chicken. As with all of our dining experiences here in Taiwan, there were a couple culinary surprises along the way!
For example, in the lower-middle area of this platter is pork intestine! I've had tripe before (From a cow) but never from pork. I found it to be a bit too oily for my tastes, but it wasn't bad. (the beef on the other hand was absolutely fantastic!)
You may not recognize the delicacy at the top of this next platter, I definitely didn't.
I guessed that it was some type of liver, but actually it is chicken hearts! (as a side note, I was surprised that chicken's have such small hearts, I would have guessed a chicken heart would be bigger than this...)
I guessed that it was some type of liver, but actually it is chicken hearts! (as a side note, I was surprised that chicken's have such small hearts, I would have guessed a chicken heart would be bigger than this...)
Anyway, we threw the chicken hearts on the grill and waited for them to cook to perfection, at which point...
...I tried one!
Here is me with my first chicken heart. Interestingly enough, I actually thought the chicken heart tasted a little bit like steak. Who knew!? It was pretty good!
Here is me with my first chicken heart. Interestingly enough, I actually thought the chicken heart tasted a little bit like steak. Who knew!? It was pretty good!
The last, and most interesting surprise of the evening is at the top of this platter:
Can you guess what it is??? Of course it is chicken, but what part of the chicken?!
.... give up!? It's chicken butt!!! Apparently, it's our friend Eric's favorite food! So obviously, I had to try it. It's basically fatty chicken meat - pretty flavorful and a bit oily. It wasn't my favorite food of the evening, but they're actually not bad, I had a couple of them!
All in all, the meal was fabulous and we had a great time - we'll definitely be returning to this place again in the future!
those chicken butts are never clean enough for me. while i do like the intestines, the butts still taste like what passed thru them.
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