Deep Fried Lamb Tripe
El Mirador de San Isidro (another ten year old review) in two parts
A too hot to touch fryer, suckling lambs intestines, crisp, crunch. A man talks to me as Its February. Sun is high. A semi suburban part of town where old people pull shopping trolleys. Cars wait as they cross the street slowly. The light isn’t red. As the born tourist I record it in my head. Could be home or a town from a holiday passed. It all passes. Another bite, chewing and the taste takes over the meat of young offal we cut animal babies open straight after sucking tit milk, straight after a snooze, dead. Days of meat between bread. Not Burgers. Meat deemed lesser. The t-shirts at the bottom of the pile. The parts they hide behind the shiny chops and shoulders. How many bites? I don’t count. How many beers? How many times have and will I make it a priority to find corners of cultures that the pizzerias, burgers, kebabs etc try to kill off and how many times will I be surprised and cheered on by a window, a queue of habitants with pushchairs and dogs and kids feeding cats eating grilled kidneys or heart, spleen or brains between bread. The bread holds us. Sandwiches us together in hunger and why not get fried potatoes too the ubiquitous tuber that sucks salt and begs you to beer or butter or drench in gone off wine or apples. At night I walk towards a famous friterie dunking the raw potatoes to order in rendered beef fat. The door is closed and they may well be there talking while wiping surfaces and airing out the night so next door another place does what we look for to feed after a day and towards the shop my hand goes into the paper the hot like water above a bath. Another direction: to get there rewarded with what locals ask for in glass with logos I don’t know and it used to be chocolate bars or crisps but know its grapes, a food experience I haven’t had to take photos with eyes focused on films and what someone says that I usually don’t hear or don’t listen to as I get weighed down by what I’ve done or where I’ve been the fresh streets map in the mind and I get into the airbnb and look out the window to see the town clock and hear others still thinking its Sunday, the office party and the binmen getting tanked after shifts of stink. The whores stand close by and a man gets angry his songs don’t play on the jukebox not knowing I stuck 10€ of Dangerous to soundtrack hotdogs. Dangerous soundtrack. Movies and no tv show can again get it as raw as Anthony. How his humour and reluctance to fame defined his work which stupid fucks want to copy, you cant. The taste of life is lived from individual experience not walking a path that you think you may know it won’t lead you anywhere but a deadend. Most deadend lives. Ends dead. End it or extended it. The media reward system not based on integrity but showboating and sure it gets you to where you want to go but this journey if you want to be there with your life and love and friends and the black dog gone then don’t believe the likes believe in what you say and eat and drink take it to heart and express gratitude to those who give you what you travel for - those moments of humanity are the stains and tears in our lives the memorable edible and inedible. Tender and close to ruin and close to losing love as well as keeping it. The bocadillo brings us to stories and vignettes of near bankruptcy moral and fiscal. An ice cream now gives me a story of a man quitting smoking, a man who changed his name in order to not be persecuted and a friend of Joyce. To be continued.