a taco that chews back

And now for a continuation of my "what's the worst thing you've ever found in your food" series....

About a year ago, my friend's three brothers came into Santa Barbara for a visit from Canada. For the first several days of their visit, my friend himself was out of town, so I took it upon myself to show them around our sunny paradise.

One of the things they wanted to do on their trip was have some good Mexican food, and being that we're closer to the source than frigid Canada, I figured it would be easy to accommodate this request. As a Chinese immigrant, I'm someone who likes the real food - I'll eat chicken feet from a cart in the street, and I will only reluctantly call anything served in a restaurant in town "Chinese food". So when I thought about where to take the three brothers for good Mexican food, I figured I would try to find something that was authentic Mexican food. Authentic, to me, = Good.

~ Enter Lilly's Taqueria ~

Lilly's Taqueria is a quaint little taco joint at the very end of Chapala where the street dead-ends into the 101. The food is real and delicious, the tacos are served on little corn tortillas that are handmade on site. It's one of those ethnic restaurants where 98% of the clientèle is of the same ethnicity as the food being served. Every time I've been to Lilly's, me and the people I'm with are the only non-Mexican patrons.

This taqueria doesn't boast a large menu; the only item available is the taco. It is served in 8 different incarnations; Beef, Steamed Beef, Marinated Pork, Head, Tongue, Cheek, Lip, and Eye. This limited menu is written in dry-erase marker on a white board hanging behind the cash register. When an item gets sold out for the day, it is erased.

I walk in with my three Canadian guests; Ryan, Matt, and the youngest, Mike. They gander at the menu and decide to each get some regular tacos (Pork or Beef) and then to each get one strange taco (Head, Tongue, Cheek, Lip, or Eye). An informal poll was taken amongst us, and Eye was voted to be the craziest of the available meats, and Mike, being the youngest, was voted to be the Eye consumer. Yum.

We all ordered our little tacos, loaded them up with goodness from the salsa bar, and sit down to chow on the steamy treasures. Much to my chagrin, the Eye taco didn't come in the form of recognizable eyeballs wrapped in a tortilla. Actually, it was pretty difficult to discern one type of meat from the other. We sat there, eating our tacos one by one, the boys each saving the strange taco for last. Good sports as they are, they ate them without complaint, and seemed to even enjoy themselves. Mike obediently and quietly ate his eyeball taco.

And he silently spit something out.

And it made a soft "clink" against the plastic table top.

We all stop eating to take a closer look at what exactly came out of Mike's mouth.

It was a tooth.

It wasn't Mike's tooth. It was the taco's tooth. Where it came from before it became the taco's tooth was anybody's guess. All four of us took turns examining the tooth. It certainly didn't look big enough to have come from a pig or a cow. On top of which, it had come from the Eye taco, not the Lip, Tongue, or Cheek taco. Eye Taco, Not Mouth Taco. This was ocular dentata.

Okay, say there's a very deformed and inbred cow or pig out there. One who was the product of many generations of mating practices from the rural deep south. And it had grown a tooth in it's eye. Okay, that's fine. But seriously, this tooth looked human. Like Javier in the kitchen knocked his face into the pantry and he didn't manage to salvage his oral nugget for the tooth fairy.

Mike was less than impressed with his unconventional condiment. Matt, on the other hand, was just as thrilled as I, and pocketed the tooth to keep as his souvenir of his trip to Santa Barbara. I wonder if he still has it, or if he took it home and put it under his pillow and woke up the next morning to find a taco staring back at him.