Just a little funny story. The other day we went to one of the many hole-in-the-wall restaurants you see on practically every street in Peru. Most of these little places will have a menu del dia (menu of the day) that lists two or three entree choices and includes soup, salad, drink and a small dessert for a set price. As usual, the entree names were in Spanish, so we tried to understand the best we could what was in each dish. I tried asking the waitress which entree was her favorite, but wasn’t sure she understood. So without any other way to decide which item to choose, I decided I would choose something that had beef in it since Ivan was choosing chicken. There was one item on the list named Cau Cau. I asked her if it was carne (meat), pescado (fish) or pollo (chicken) and she replied “carne”. So I chose that. After she brought our plates I ate a few bites of the stew on mine. It tasted a little rubbery and didn’t exactly look like beef, so I Googled Cau Cau and discovered that its a Peruvian dish that’s typically made out of beef tripe! Oooooooohhhhhh! Gross!!!

Oh well. At least now I can say I’ve tried tripe (I did NOT eat the rest of it, however I did eat the potatoes and carrots from the stew). And the cost of the whole meal was only 8 Soles, which is less than $2.50!