My snapshot of Toro's sliced beef heart
Thinly sliced beef heart at Ken Oringer’s Toro. My dining partner was a little apprehensive at first, but pronounced the finished product akin to roast beef – I’d say it’s more fine grained. I love how offal can look so innocuous but surprise you with a certain intensity of flavor or texture. Like their sweetbreads – my first, actually. I’ll post pictures of those later.
I got into an interesting debate with a Facebook commenter. See our exchange:
Lingbo Li Ran into tweep @simonepress who was sitting next to me at @tororestaurant – how cool and random! Had the corn, beef hearts, short rib – yum!
Wed at 11:18am via Unnamed App Custom: loading… · Comment · LikeUnlike · View Feedback (11)Hide Feedback (11)Commenter
My stomach just turned upside down.
Wed at 11:36am ·Lingbo Li
It was sliced very thin and put on a slice of bread – it tasted more like roast beef than anything else.
Wed at 11:39am ·
Commenter
Try endangered sea turtle eggs. Not bad.
Wed at 12:11pm ·Lingbo Li
Beef hearts are not endangered… the ethics are completely different.
Wed at 12:31pm ·
Commenter
Well…..it depends the country ur at where the “When in rome” qoute applies. I still get skeeved from the idea of consuming hearts of animals…i can imagine it was once beating.
Wed at 12:33pm ·Lingbo Li
Thinking something is “gross” is not the same as thinking it is unethical – you can think brussel sprouts are gross, but that’s a personal preference, not a ethical or necessarily cultural one. A piece of beef was once moving as well – it’s muscle, just like the heart is muscle. The ethical argument for eating hearts would be that it’s making use of something that would normally be thrown away, meaning less waste and respecting every part of the animal.
Wed at 1:08pm ·
Commenter
Lemme just think ….what would Hannibal Lector do?
So I’ve gotten comments before on the ethics of what I eat. One person criticized me for eating whale steak (it was from the mink whale, which is not endangered), while some of the stuff I eat is just kind of gross. I mean, I don’t expect everyone to spring for calves brains. I do happen to think that eating offal is one the most ethical and delicious things you can do to reduce waste, but the knee-jerk grossout reaction from some people is saddening.
And if you’re curious who this Ken Oringer is, photographer Andy Ryan took a bunch of photos of the Burger Bash and happened to capture some of me. (I’m not BFFs with Ken! I talked to him for about five minutes. And ragged on his Red Sox chefs whites.)
Photos with celebs are interesting – I always feel like they only exist to simulate a relationship that doesn’t exist, a fleeting fame-by-association.
Me with Boston restaurateur Ken Oringer, photo by Andy Ryan, courtesy of Chris Lyons
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Hi! I’ve been following you on my rss for a bit now and I loooove your photos and writing :)
I was thinking of going to Toro at some point. How are their other stuff? What would you recommend?
Posted by Jenny | February 20, 2010, 12:12 pmThanks Jenny! I’ll make a post soon about my full Toro experience…
Posted by Lingbo Li | February 20, 2010, 12:57 pmSince beef hearts aren’t endangered or slaughtered for only this purpose, no I wouldn’t be concerned. It’s only a question in the mind of those who aren’t adventurous or have experienced a culture outside of the US. Endangered sea turtles are a totally different story. Keep up the good work.
Posted by Jay | February 20, 2010, 2:28 pmBravo for making an excellent point: that by not eating offal we are actually behaving unethically. Discarding offal means that we are wasting perfectly good food. Look at all the carbon spent in feeding an animal for slaughter.
Not eating head to tail is a pretty profligate waste of resources. If one chooses not to go vegan, one should commit to utilizing the whole food source.
Posted by Rob Marais | February 20, 2010, 3:41 pm