The Phenomenology of Eating Testicles

at home before heading off to Turkey, my dad would call me into the room when he was watching tv: “have you ever seen this guy? he travels the world eating all sorts of strange foods.” the 3 or 4 times i watched, perhaps 3 or 4 different versions of the same show, the travelers ate some form of testicles.

walking down a strip in Istanbul, my friend turned to me and asked if i'd like to eat lamb colon, which made me think of my dad and the travel show fetishism of strange meats.

why is it that travel becomes linked with eating strange foods, especially strange meats? especially in über-choice, globalized u.s. food markets we can probably eat testicle right at home, anytime we want. doubtless i could seek a local butcher in the u.s. serving a variety of strange meaty portions, but i never have.

so why are travel shows so often about eating testicles and why did i commit to eating lamb colon because i was walking down the street in a foreign country? my guess is that the act of eating strange meats becomes sound-bite exoticism. i'll call this the “you'll meet an acquaintance at a bar theory of travel.”

a bar somewhere in northern Illinois:

Acquaintance: “Hey man, i heard you went to Turkey, how was it?”

Me: “Turkey was nuts! they eat lamb colon over there!”

A: “did you try it?”

Me: “Hell Yes I did, and it was Awesome!”

the shock value of the food represents both the foreignness of my travels and my immersion into them. if i travel around Turkey without eating all the strange intestinal and sexual organs available then folks at home will think i haven't engaged with the culture. so i found myself eating lamb colon in Istanbul because it validates my travel experience.

(by the way, the dish is named kokoreç, and the lamb colon is ground up with spices, cooked on a skewer, and then finely chopped with vegetables and placed on submarine sandwich bread. it is really spicy and my Turkish friends say it is healthy and good to eat after a night of drinking.)