A guy goes to a taco stand and asks for their best taco. The taco guy says, “That would be lengua.” The customer says, “No way! I would never eat tongue—it came out of the mouth of an animal!” “Well,” says the taco guy, “how about some huevos rancheros?”
This is my variation on a joke that I got from reading an interview with Jacques Pepin. Not surprisingly, it’s an excellent joke because Jacques Pepin is an excellent man—the type of guy that you want to be when you grow up. I interviewed him once for 7×7 after being invited to watch him shoot one of his KQED shows here in SF. I was surprised to find that his sweet French grandfather act fell to the side completely; in person, he was more interested in talking food politics than how to make a fine-herbes omelet and spoke so fast with such a thick accent that I had to scrap the story because I couldn’t really understand a thing he said (and was too embarrassed to admit it).
This joke of his brings up something that I’ve considered many times myself. As popular and delicious as our tongue tacos are (and they are really delicious), I can’t really have a tongue taco without thinking how odd it is that people eat tongue. That one eats tongue with … a tongue. It seems to be a conflict of interest. Someone once suggested we call the lengua tacos the Mexican Kiss. Which I’m not sure made me feel any better about this.
Either way, for those squeamish about tongue, you can take solace in the fact that Thursday at this week’s market, we’re debuting our heuvos rancheros. Come and get it—from the other end.