What a ‘Rocky Mountain Oyster’ Tastes Like

You’d like to eat my *what*?

The Roman emperor Vitellius (15–69 A.D.) was famous for dinners that strained both the imperial budget and the palates of his guests: one menu, which doubtlessly sent his Navy scrambling far and wide, featured pike livers, flamingo tongues, lamprey roe, and pheasant brains. Imagine the reactions of the chefs faced with preparing such exotic fare for their Gluttonous Lordship, bouncing their knives nervously in calloused hands, murmuring, “What the heck is this?” (Quis heck est?), and, “If we mess up, we’ll be crucified at dawn” (very roughly: Si nos nuntius sursum, nos ero iuguolo prima luce).

Today’s chefs can experiment with all manner of curious foodstuffs without fear of gruesomely inventive execution (middling reviews in influential newspapers and websites are another story, of course). Experimentation on the eater’s part, however, can sometimes take a little courage. How else to explain my hesitation several years back, at the First Annual Unique and Unusual Food and Wine Festival in Washington DC, as I held aloft a fried calf testicle hot out of the oil?

“They’ve been eating animal testicles for centuries,” Russel Cunningham, executive chef of the then-extant Dupont Grille and preparer of that crispy morsel, told me as I considered the nugget in my hand. “When you peel the membrane off, actually, they look just like foie gras.”