The Day I Ate Monkey Brains

I left for lunch late today, which means when I arrived at my usual hole-in-the-wall spot, the same place I eat everyday, the good stuff was already gone.

"Today, oat rice!" The woman behind the counter cheerfully exclaimed from behind her face mask, a surgical shade of sea foam green.

"Ah, okay," I said, nodding my approval. She scooped some into a to-go container, and waited, with her shiny silver tongs poised over the trays, for me to indicate what else I wanted. Just like she would any other day.

I pointed at the piece of taro. This was no surprise to her, and she scooped it up quickly, patting it down into the bed of oat rice. Usually I got at least two pieces of taro every day, but there was only one left.

Through the glass case, I squinted warily at the other items. She glanced at the growing line behind me, the curious foreigner who always took too much time to make her mind at the counter. "Yes, yessss, aaand?" She urged.

I gestured at something that looked okay, I guess, at least, in the absence of all of the things that I would normally chose.

But I didn't know what else I wanted. I felt my face flush from the pressure, as I listened to the shifting feet, the audible sighs, the folding and unfolding of bills, and other noises of growing impatience coming from the people waiting behind me.

She picked up an unidentifiable chunk of something. "Here, you try this one," she said, and I winced a little bit, as she placed the uneven, grayish matter on top of my beloved purple taro.

"Uhh," I stuttered. "Great, ummm, thanks." But the speed of her words piqued a certain sense of dread in me. The styrofoam container must have felt the same way, squeaking in distress as it was closed roughly and shoved across the counter to the counting and change lady.

Pulling out my wallet to pay, I turned back to the woman and asked: "What exactly is it that you gave me?"

"Boiled brains of monkey," she replied without batting an eyelash. "Try, you will like," she insisted with a fleeting smile, before turning back to help her other hungry customers. My stomach turned.

"Today a little bit expensive. Thirty-five," she said pointedly, with her hand opened and outstretched, bobbing encouragingly in mid-air, waiting for bills to be placed within.

I was still absorbing the shock of what lay waiting inside my lunch box, and in a daze, handed her three twenty dollar bills.

The lady clucked at me in a matronly way, taking my hand, replacing the extra twenty, closing my fist around the bill, and sending me along my way.

To be clear, we're not talking about REAL boiled brains of monkey. I'm vegetarian, after all, and this was a strictly Buddhist cafe.

But even so, when I sat down to eat, I wasn't yet finished contemplating how I felt about this. I have been vegetarian for over six years now. Since then, I've eaten meat exactly twice. Once, in Australia, when my boyfriend ordered a filet of kangaroo. Because, I mean, when else was I going to have the chance to eat a kangaroo? And then once again in Tibet, under the same line of reasoning, when a friend ordered a yak steak. I didn't really care for either, but I felt grateful for the opportunities that allowed me to try both.

Still. Boiled brains of monkey, even fake ones, seemed like a stretch for me. Buddhists seem to specialize in creating convincing replications of meat from gluten and soy and other plant derivatives. I opened the container to peer inside, and the ridges looked a little too much like a high school science project for my own comfort.

My father, an unabashedly adventurous eater, counts monkey brains among one of the few things he would never eat, under any circumstances. Especially not the cruel circumstances under which they're usually served (at a large banquet, where purposefully placed holes in the long wood tables act as gallows around the neck of the monkey, who squirms there in a frenzy, until his head is cut open and his brain served raw). Still sitting with my untouched lunch, I whip out my iPhone, and one quick Google search later, I find that Wikipedia reports that that's an urban legend.

Hmm. That changes everything. Or does it?

I awkwardly take a nibble, before placing the lump of, well, whatever it is, in the lid of the container, where it weighed heavily on the weak styrofoam, but not my conscience. I don't end up eating any more of it, but again, I felt all the more wordly for the experience.

Comments

Posted on 9/22/2009 by

Meredith Reese

What did it taste like?!

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