Foot in Mouth

Taking a trip to Millbrae for dim sum might seem excessive. But, when you’re on El Camino, scarfing down excellent chinese cuisine, the BART ride suddenly seems worth it all. Known for having strange things on the menu The Kitchen has drawn us in with their braised chicken feet. The portions here are hearty, but we are eating dim sum so we order some other things, like duck tongue and chinese style tripe, but we’ll save those for some other post. The chicken feet are braised in a claypot with some sort of dark soy sauce. The talons are pulled out but where the foot has been cut off you can still see the bone which makes them funny to look at. Beneath the chicken skin, complete with little bumps that look like goosebumps, there is a lot of cartilage and soft bones which make the feet a lot of work to eat. The best strategy? Hold the part where the leg used to be and pull a toe off first. Grossed out yet? Suck the skin and meat off the bones and spit out the bones and cartilage. Next eat the padded foot area. Though delicious, do not order these on a date. Saying "Eeny meeny miny moe, grab and suck a chicken toe" is not sexy. (650) 692-9688, 279 El Camino Real

No Fear of Deer

When I was a young girl Bambi was my least favorite Disney film. Not because I don’t like deer, but I just couldn’t get past the opening scene where the mommy deer is shot to death. Now, twenty years later, something that once looked like Bambi is on my plate at Suppenkuche, the Hayes Valley German resto and beer destination. Thinking that someone shot this deer, like the hunters did to Bambi’s mom so I could eat it makes me a little bit sad, but my sadness is quickly over shadowed. Overshadowed by excitement to finally try some deer meat. Properly called venison, people eat deer meat in all sorts of ways. Venison sausages, and jerky are two other ways to serve it, but tonight on the Suppenkuche menu it’s venison medallions. Served with sauerkraut, of course, a red wine plum sauce and herbed spaetzle, german for little flour dumplings, think gnocchi, the venison medallions are delicious. Well they’re really just alright, but this blog isn’t called Disgusting or alright. The meat is very lean, but still tender. Flavor-wise initially tastes like a very very lean steak the game hits hard towards those last chews though. The red wine plum sauce that comes with is nice to distract your palette from that game-y taste, but a bit sweet for my savory taste. I prefer the sauerkraut’s acidity with the meat, it just makes everything on the tongue pop. And the spaetzle is bomb dot com. Near and deer to my heart. 525 Laguna St., 415.252.9289