Lend Me Your Ears...I'm Hungry

Spicy Pig Ears

For any of you who know me, it will come as no surprise to hear that I enjoy my pork. I could easily rattle off a Forest Gump sized list of dishes featuring the unfortunate little piggy that cried “wee wee wee” all the way to the slaughter house, but for the sake of keeping this post somewhat brief, I’ll just assume that you trust me on that. I, like most pork lovers, derive a great deal of enjoyment out of all of your classic pig parts; bacon, ham, pork belly etcetera, but I by no means stop there. My fetish for the swine of the earth has a darker side. It goes beyond normal, past unusual, and continues deep into the realm of such porky perversions that only the most depraved of human beings would dare set foot. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but I do like to nibble on those alternative bits that can be somewhat hard to find, unless of course, you know where to look.

In order to find these underappreciated morsels, one doesn’t need to go far, in fact they’re all right here in Orange County. One spot in particular offers one of my personal favorites, pig ear. The restaurant I’m referring to is A&J in Irvine. I need to make one disclaimer about this place. It does NOT cater to white people. So if you’re under the impression that P.F. Chang’s orange chicken is the epitome of “good Chinese,” I’d stay far, far away. For the rest of you, this place is the real deal. So authentic, in fact, that until recently (so I’ve been told), they didn’t even have English translations on the menu. I’ve wanted to try this place for a while. Not only do they have pig ear, but a smorgasbord of tasty treats; like thousand year egg, tripe in spicy red sauce, and tendon with garlic…excuse me while I wipe off the saliva that’s trickling down my chin. After a long wait, I finally got the chance to eat here tonight.

The verdict? It was everything that I hoped it would be. I ordered the thousand year egg, spicy pig ear, beef and tendon soup (Szechuan style), and some steamed pork dumplings. The thousand year egg, in all honesty, scared the bejesus out of me when I first saw it. It’s dark purple on the outside, and is slightly translucent, like jello. The yolk is a mixture of purple, green, and grey, and has the texture of a thick pudding. I picked up a big chunk with my chopsticks, fully expecting a fit of uncontrollable heaving to immediately follow contact with my mouth. I dropped it down the hatch and shockingly; no projectile vomiting; no sly attempt to spit it into a napkin; there wasn’t even a series of fake yummy noises while I gulped down a glass of water to rid my palate of the injustice it was forced to endure; it was, much to my surprise, delicious. Very mild soy flavor and with the exception of the gelatinous outside, much like the texture of a soft boiled egg.

Beef and Tendon Soup (that's a chunk of tendon)

Now that the experimentation was over for the night, I enjoyed my plate of pig ears, which are essentially a thin piece of crunchy cartilage surrounded by even more gelatinous fun. My only complaint is that they were far from anything resembling spicy, but nothing a little chili oil couldn’t fix. The soup was my ideal comfort food. The best part was the tendon. Unlike the tendon I’ve become accustomed to in pho restaurants, this wasn’t sliced ultra thin; it was chunky, in your face, "too hot for TV" connective tissue, and I couldn’t get enough. My only negative experience of the night was the steamed dumpling that I so foolishly ate the second it came to our table. It was blisteringly hot, the kind of hot that forced huge tears out of my eyes and turned my entire face blood red. To say the least, it hurt. Oral third degree burns aside, this was a great meal. I can’t wait to go back, and I urge anyone who has never had authentic Chinese/Taiwanese food to throw away that Pick Up Stix takeout box, and head over to A&J, pronto.