Photos > Kitchen Horrors (13)
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Sweetbreads
These are sweetbreads - a delicacy to some, but not to me. They're actually the spit glands of baby cows. They must be soaked overnight in cold water and then peeled. Evidently the best way to serve them is sauteed in butter with a little salt and pepper.
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Tripe Sausage
For some reason, the kitchen goes crazy every time we serve tripe sausages. To me, they smell worse than they look, and although I've tried a bite or two, I just can't make myself like the idea of eating someone's lower intestine. Pass the vegetables please.
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Baby Birds
I forget what these are called, but in a nutshell, these are tiny migratory birds. They are plucked and the skin removed. Wrapped in pork fat, they arrive all nicely packed together with some sort of berry. From what I can tell, you roast the whole thing and eat it all. Nausious yet?!?
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Chicken Heads
This is what greets me every day as I walk into the cooler. All the birds we prepare arrive whole - heads, innards, feet, etc. It's not my job to transform these lovely carcasses into your next dinner.
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Ham
Evidently this is a very special kind of ham. It's been sitting in the cooler as long as I've been at the restaurant and can keep twice as long. Although it's rather macabre to look at, I have eaten a slice and I must admit, it's quite tasty.
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Fish Heads
Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads. Eat them up, yum! Remember that sond from your childhood? These fish don't actually have heads though. Perhaps they'll show up in our next staff dinner.
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Saint Jacques
Actually, I find this picture rather beautiful. Since they're in season, each day we receive boxes and boxes of scallops. It's the fish guy's responsibility to shell them all each day. See that orange thumb-like piece at the edge? That's what I use to make the scallop royales at lunch. It's actually the scallop's reproductive organ. Leave it to the French to eat that!
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Pig Bladders
Guess what?!? Those are pig bladders blown up to the size of basketballs. But you know what's even better? There's a whole chicken in there! Yup, this preparation is considered quite wonderful by the French. You place a whole chicken inside the pig bladder and then roast the whole concotion. Then we place each bladder into a copper pot and whisk it out to the client for their viewing pleasure. The bladder is then popped tableside and the chicken revealed. Fancy huh?
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Brain Food
Yep, it was brain time again this week. These lovely little puppies took a nice swim in some cold water overnight before they were peeled, sauteed and served. On the way we had these, just as we were about to sit down to eat, the garbage truck came. That meant we had to leave our brains behind and spend the next 20 minutes schleping drippy garbage into a smelly truck. By the time we got back, our brains and canned peas were cold. Lovely.
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Sea Urchin
At the restaurant, you too can eat sea urchin. I've heard it's a afrodesiac, but I'm not about to try it. Here, David cuts open the live urchins, ripps out the inedible parts (it all look inedible to me), and wraps them in plastic until ready to serve.
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Hands
Although it's hard to tell from the photo, David hands are in bad, bad shape. I think he's having an alergic reaction to Guy Savoy. Maybe he better leave before his hands turn to dust and he's left with two stumps.
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Fish Eyes
Who wants a nice, refreshing bowl of fish eyes, gills, and things? Goodness only knows what they do with it afterwards. Like I said, maybe it will show up in our next staff dinner.
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Cup O Fat
Or even better, how about a whole bowl of fat? I get to clean this every day which is such a pleasure. This gets dumped into a huge barrel and then I haven't the faintest clue where the barrel goes.