Content-Type: text/shitpost

A while back I wrote about the time I didn't eat the gizzards:

At some point I passed by a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere away from everything else, and since it was dinner time, I went in.

The special that day was chicken gizzards, which I've never had. But I wimped out and ordered a hamburger. Dammit. I was having an adventure, and when the adventure offered up a plot twist I said “No thanks, I've had enough.”

It would have been easy enough to get gizzards since then, they do sell them in stores. But the opportunity I'd missed was to have serendipitous gizzards: unexpectedly end up somewhere I'd never been, and have the gizzards be offered without any need for me to seek them out.

One nice thing about getting older has been to finish some of those projects I didn't complete when I was young. Well, it's taken decades, but the hand of fate offered me more gizzards, and this time I took them.

Last Saturday Lorrie was busy, and Toph wanted a midnight pickup from a party, so I decided to kill a couple of hours by taking the car for an unplanned later dinner somewhere before I picked her up. I ended up at Rudy's Tavern in Upper Darby. I've probably driven past Rudy's a hundred times, but I'd never been in.

Rudy's was hopping, clearly in the early throes of a big night. There was a DJ, folks playing pool, couples sitting at the bar, some people thinking baout dancing. Food at Rudy's is supplied by an elderly Chinese couple at a takeout window in the back. The offered dishes included the usual bar fare, some Chinese dishes, and various battered fried things… one of which was deep-fried chicken gizzards. And this time I did not wimp out.

Gizzards are tough and cartilaginous, fun to chew. Battered and fried, they were pretty good, accompanied well by cold Yuengling.

I thought about the time I'd been in the yakitori pub in Tokyo and had gotten batter balls with chicken joint cartilage at the center. This was better than that. If I were offered them again in a similar situation, I might order them again, especially if they were cheap and I was not very hungry.