Tonight's Menu ... you don't wanna know.

So I was in Jakarta, and I walked over to the local mall to find some dinner one evening. Found a dim sum place that looked like the food hadn't come directly from the floodwaters that were scattered around town. Ordered three different wooden bowls by pointing at the pictures on the menu, since I can't read any Indonesian. 

Two were great. The third was supposed to be bbq chicken. As indeed it was, after a fashion - it was bbq chicken feet. 

Though I had nobody to impress but the waiter, I manfully decided to eat them. So I had a couple of bites. I could pretend like I just didn't like the sauce. 

But the truth is, eating a chicken foot is like eating fat on a toe bone. There is no there there. There is nothing useful about a chicken foot. Taste - nasty. Texture - nasty. Leftover toe bone on your tongue - nasty. Appearance - seriously, looks like something left by Hannibal Lecter. It looks like a gory, slaughtered foot. 

Hamburger doesn't look like a cow. Pork ribs don't look like a pig. Chicken legs don't look like a chicken. But chicken feet look like feet. Dead, murdered, bloody feet. Looks like a crime scene from the TV show Bones. 

And then when you put it in your mouth, it feels like a foot. Chicken legs don't feel like a leg. But chicken feet - just like a foot. Looks like a foot. Feels like a foot. Tastes like a foot. A nasty bit of foot fat on a toe bone.

I was so grossed out, I had to follow the ancient, traditional cure for being grossed out after eating a chicken foot. I went next door and bought a Wendy's hamburger. Almost had to get a Frosty, too, just to purge it all from my system.