Gareth Storey
Answers his own questions
If you teleport to eat tripe right now where would it be?
County Cork 100 years ago…someone is serving tripe and onions and drisheen at a table after a long days work and a few pints. Soda bread scents the air. A fireplace warms my toes. Or somewhere in South Africa surrounded by languages I don’t understand. A host serves from a pot of Mogodu. I’ve only seen pictures of this I will wonder if I’m dead or dreaming, I can’t smell pictures. Wouldn’t social media be improved by scatch n sniff? Then I want to teleport to Lyon for grilled andouillettes and andouillettes baked in cream with fries and pots of Beaujolais too. While i’m waking up in different places to eat i’d go to the north of England when tripe dressers where as normal as fast food. I guess I want to witness a caff of people eating tripe as it should be. It was only fifty years ago.
What was your first time?
Seeing it: in a pet store. Tasting: in a kitchen I was washing dishes at in 1998 on a Monday morning with a hangover. It was in bechamel. Very bland but not bad. My first time enjoying it was in Madrid at Casa Lucio.
Favourite recipe?
I will elaborate on recipes in another post but a favourite is the basic recipe of sweating a mirepoix in fat, adding blanched tripe and then a sauce- could be tomato or bechamel or red wine…
From a book: Callos a la madrileña by Simon Hopkinson in Roast Chicken and other stories. I ‘borrowed’ my da’s copy a long time ago.
Who and where has cooked the one you’ve enjoyed the most (if more than one stands out please feel free to elaborate)?
Borja at Granja Elena in Barcelona cooks callos that I call Michelin star tripe. If its with cap I pota, even better.
Some toothless guy in Marrakech at a stall with no name or prices or qr code served me camel tripe on my 41st birthday. I found the stall on a morning wander and went back to the riad to wake Laura up.
Sergio Pollinis’ lampredotto stand in Florence- been going there for 15 years and its worth the flight alone. I spent a week in Florence with a friend and we ate there every breakfast.
Rodolph at Repaire de Cartouche
James Henry at Bones circa 2014 served with wet polenta. I remember he put it on the tasting menu as the main course. Inspirational.
A place in Honfleur that I believe may be closed: Bacaretto. Tripe au Cidre served with a bottle of cidre brut followed by a calvados and a plate of cheese.
Fried Tripe and ketchup at the bar of St John some years ago, 2007 I’d say. The bar was where I spent all my money on food and wine. It was my education.
Bad experiences?
Two, both by my own hand. First: I was cooking an andouillette I’d bought at Borough market in my small kitchen by Euston Station 20 years ago and It burnt, the kitchen stunk like a pub toilet after a fire. My flatmates were not happy.
Second: I was working at Le Bal Café and I tried to make tripe and onions out of the St John book. I didn’t blanch the tripe first and it didn’t ever get soft. After ten hours of cooking I gave up. That disappointment fulled me to make it again and get better.
Three places you would recommend (anywhere in the world)
I’ll only say the places I’ve eaten at because I don’t want to recommend somewhere I want to go :
Granja Elena, Barcelona
Pollinis Lamredotto stand, Florence
Imperial do Campo do Ourique, Lisbon (only on Thursdays)
Which tripe would you choose to eat if there wasn’t beef?
I’d choose lamb. A nice pied et paquets, boiled rice and a magnum of Axel Prufer rose.
A rough guess at how many skeptics you have converted?
A lot. 100?200?
A sentance or paragraph about andouillette:
When the restaurant Amarante opened in Paris I went there the first week and ordered a andouillette. It was an andouillette of the highest quality served with mash and jus. The cuisson and seasonings of the ingredients and the nice Morgon in my glass elated me to the point where I refused dessert and coffee as I wanted the taste to last for as long as it could. Also in Paris I would go to Le Bougainville each Monday and eat one with fries and a demi pression to bring me back from the brink. Fergus Henderson wrote of a salad that saved his life, my life has often been saved by an andouillette.