Nenta, our waitress at Legend's Bar and Restaurant, a new Sichuan joint in Chelsea, watched over my shoulder and giggled as I slowly raised my fork to my mouth.
"I don't like it! I don't like it!" she chanted, to whom exactly, I'm not sure.
I didn't mind. This might be as close as I get to that fantasy cheerleading squad I've been trying to assemble for my battles with new and exotic foods.
On the plate? A braised turtle. This is the latest effort in my campaign to devour every living thing that's ever been depicted as a cute, smiley cartoon (minus Olive Oyl).
Legend's doesn't stoop to turtle soup, in which Franklin's unique flavor is typically muted by lots of spices. Take the Creole version of the soup: good luck tasting more than cayenne pepper.
Not at Legend's, where the menu dares customers with dishes like "Tears in Your Eyes," a spicy noodle dish and an unlikely homage to mid-1980s Prince. Happily, I was served a straight shot of beak-to-tail reptile. Why not? Minus the gall bladder and lungs, it's completely edible, from the white meat of the neck and back, to the dark meat of the legs.
The chef, who comes from the Sichuan province, doesn't stop there when it comes to delivering the unadulterated turtle eating experience. Common turtle-cooking wisdom - if there is such a thing - is to extract all of the fat, an approach that helps refine a very gamey, fishy flavor.
Legend's leaves the fat, which prompted a debate at our table. My dad said the taste was gamey. My mom said fishy. In the case of an amphibian, who is right? Both, I think. Can you fully understand or appreciate the earthiness of bison or the pungency of oysters until you've experienced the precise point of convergence between these two flavor extremes?
The chef hasn't completely lost his mind - he slips under the shell some ginger and garlic slices to balance the powerful turtle essence. There's also a rich sauce and, at the plate's rim, a garnish of limes and cherries, which you can pluck as needed.
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Use these tongue-crutches sparingly, though, and you get a little taste of life 250 million years ago. Turtles have ambled the Earth since before the dinosaurs, and survive today with their physical structure relatively unchanged.
Definitely deserving of pom-poms.
I admire your sense of eating adventure. Sounds like an interesting experience. Would you be "game" for another round?
ReplyDeleteFollowing up on Lisa's comment, I'm interested to learn if you would take on turtle twice. On a scale of 1 to 10, how tasty is the turtle dish? Would you recommend it to other adventurous eaters?
ReplyDelete