They were delicious. Not so delicious that I will specifically seek them out where ever I go, but in the off chance I have the opportunity to eat them again at a good restaurant, I would consider it
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| A Timid Traveler, I |
For such a short time spent in Denver I had a number of adventures (if you want to call them that). I got to spend some time with some good friends I hadn't seen in a year; I went to the Denver Art Museum and saw an exhibition of Samurai armor that was really excellent; Dave (one of my friends from work) and I drove to Leadville one night, where we drank Coors (The Banquet Beer) in the oldest saloon left standing in a town that used to be the shit but is no longer since the silver boom bust about 120 years ago; we hiked the next day to an altitude of 10,188 feet up the Holy Cross City Trail before being stopped by knee deep snow.
Meanwhile there was a conference to attend. It was the 75th SAWE international conference. Mass properties engineers from all over the world converged on the Hyatt Regency DTC to hear about weights and weight management and mass distributions. I made a presentation on the complexities in delineating between lightship and load items during ship surveys, and I think it went quite well. I even told a joke about Aristotle during the presentation...and people laughed! People actually laughed.
Fine, fine, they only chuckled, but it was still more than I was expecting.
And yet out of all of that, the thing that got the most hits on Facebook was this picture of me about to dig into a plate of Rocky Mountain Oysters (the aforementioned bull testicles) at the Buckhorn Exchange. Basically, for 90% of the people out there, it would seem that RMOs are just a flat out "no". You would not eat them in a car, you would not them in a bar, you would not eat them with a hat, you would not eat them with a bat. You would not eat them here nor there. You would not eat them anywhere.
I find, I think, that a lot of people don't like the idea of eating balls. They just don't. I can understand that a lot of people might find it to be gross, or barbaric. Maybe for some backwaters of our great land its a sexual thing, like they are worried it will turn them into homosexuals. Or maybe men in particular can't help but imagine their own testicles on a plate, and end up empathizing with the poor, unfortunate animal.
Which is the most non-sensical thing of all. If you have any empathy for the cow (or in this case a bull), then how it is it possible to eat a flank steak or a porterhouse without batting an eyelash, especially when that cow has probably lived its entire life in preperation for ending up on your plate? How does imagining a kick to the groonies compare with being fattened and sold for slaughter? If you are going to eat one part of an animal, you may as well be open to eating other parts, so I says.
So - how did they taste?
They were a little chewy, just a little creamy. They tasted more like fried clams but did have something of a texture of a fried oyster. I thought that I would, perhaps, taste the barnyard a bit but I didn't really and that was a good thing. All in all, a nice appetizer, but again not something I am going to go out of my way to get. No fears good people - this is the last time I shall wrap myself in the self-righteous robe of a ball eater.
And yes, I will put in a plug for the Buckhorn Exchange. An interesting place, very good food. Denver's oldest steakhouse. Everything I ate there (even the salad, amazingly) was incredibly good. Don't have too much lunch before you go, and make sure you get reservations -- even on the Monday I went, it was packed, and it was a two hour wait for a table. It may not be Denver's trendiest restaurant, but was still quite an experience. So much so that I almost, almost, got the t-shirt.
