# The awful racist attitudes of Americans against offal, fair or unfair? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 2, 2014, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724 "2014-01-02T18:41:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2014, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/101 "2014-01-05T22:59:33Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Yeah, you can find pla ra, here too, although I’ve only seen it at a restaurant that specializes in Northern Thai food. I believe it was in the green papaya salad. There’s a good number of cultures that do the fermented fish thing. (And isn’t fish sauce made from fermenting fish, anyway?) Some of it is more pungent than others. Swedish surströmming I’ve found to be quite pungent. I think you mean northeastern Thai food. Never seen _pla ra_ in northern Thailand, and I lived up there for a couple of years. Only in the Northeast. The two are separate regions and have rather different cuisines. Papaya salad is generally northeastern too, but the North may have its own version. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2014, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/102 "2014-01-05T23:10:26Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I think you mean northeastern Thai food. Never seen _pla ra_ in northern Thailand, and I lived up there for a couple of years. Only in the Northeast. The two are separate regions and have rather different cuisines. Papaya salad is generally northeastern too, but the North may have its own version. Just thought I should explain too that the difference between northern and northeastern Thai is not a nitpick. They may sound close geographically and may actually be close, but they are a world apart, having developed across different lines. The dialects are different. Even the physical types – northern Thais are considered the height of beauty by Thais nationwide, the northeastern Thais the ugliest. Etc. Same with the food, although everyone is so trained that papaya salad is general Thai food, they’ll pretty much serve that in any Thai restaurant abroad. ---
**Author:** ![Peanuthead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peanuthead/32/360_2.png) [@Peanuthead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peanuthead)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2014, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/103 "2014-01-05T23:41:06Z")
Offal…Awful. Awful…Offal. (Oops! Sorry. I thought I was David Letterman. Carry on.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2014, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/104 "2014-01-05T23:56:44Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Just thought I should explain too that the difference between northern and northeastern Thai is not a nitpick. They may sound close geographically and may actually be close, but they are a world apart, having developed across different lines. The dialects are different. Even the physical types – northern Thais are considered the height of beauty by Thais nationwide, the northeastern Thais the ugliest. Etc. Same with the food, although everyone is so trained that papaya salad is general Thai food, they’ll pretty much serve that in any Thai restaurant abroad. The place I’m thinking of with the ant eggs and worms advertised themselves as Northern Thai, but the green papaya salad has to be ordered Lao style for the fermented fish sauce. [This is the one, if you’re curious.](http://stickyricethai.com) They don’t seem to have the insects on the online menu, but the “Northern Thai” menu has offal on it including intestines and blood. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/105 "2014-01-06T00:03:13Z")
That’s not to say you’re not correct–I know they’re two differmt regions, with Northeast being Issan, but they do serve pla ra at the Northern Thai place so I assume they must be mixing in other regional Thai cuisines in their offering. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/106 "2014-01-06T01:54:39Z")
Ant eggs and worms are without a doubt northeastern fare. It’s only the Northeasterners who eat bugs and stuff. That’s traditionally the poorest region, and many times they’ve had no choice. I couldn’t say for sure why that restaurant chose to market themselves as northern Thai while serving that, but I suspect it probably is mostly northern, and they’ve thrown in some bugs for novelty’s sake. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/107 "2014-01-06T02:14:15Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > The place I’m thinking of with the ant eggs and worms advertised themselves as Northern Thai, but the green papaya salad has to be ordered Lao style for the fermented fish sauce. > > [This is the one, if you’re curious.](http://stickyricethai.com) They don’t seem to have the insects on the online menu, but the “Northern Thai” menu has offal on it including intestines and blood. The Offal House menu! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/108 "2014-01-06T02:20:31Z")
There definitely is some good northern food on that menu. _Sai ua_ (northern Thai sausage) is really good over here. And _kow soy_ (various spellings) is a staple. It’s actually Burmese. Much northern food comes from Burma or is at least Burmese influenced. But the best _kow soy_ – or _khao soi_, as I usually spell it – I’ve ever had is at a long-running noodle shop in Bangkok. ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/109 "2014-01-06T02:42:38Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > By my calculations, you clock in at about .08 milihitlers. Haha, milihitlers. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/110 "2014-01-07T14:59:33Z")
This is the first time I’ve heard of organs referred to as “offal”, but I looked it up and 'tis so. Until now I thought of offal as trotters, connective tissue, reclaimed meats, and the like. Whatever, I’d eat pate every day if I could. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/111 "2014-01-07T16:33:52Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Imagine you licked all the inside walls of a decade-old dumpster out behind a greasy-spoon diner, then puked your guts up. I can imagine it would look and smell similar to _pla ra_. _confident nod_ Oh. Hákarl. Hold on a second, will you ? _mad dash_ NEVER AGAIN ! You bastards won’t [del]take me alive[/del]make me eat that alive ! Hákarl has this additional peculiarity that, once tasted, you will keep on tasting it for about two weeks. This stuff made me understand, on a very deep and intimate level, why the Vikings roamed far and wide. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/112 "2014-01-07T18:36:54Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > _confident nod_ Oh. Hákarl. Hold on a second, will you ? _mad dash_ NEVER AGAIN ! You bastards won’t [del]take me alive[/del]make me eat that alive ! > > Hákarl has this additional peculiarity that, once tasted, you will keep on tasting it for about two weeks. This stuff made me understand, on a very deep and intimate level, why the Vikings roamed far and wide. There’s a great clip of Top Gear’s James May and Gordon Ramsey sharing some of this lovely dish. Ramsey spit it out, but May swallowed it and followed up with “You disappoint me, Ramsey.” I’m posting from my phone, so I can’t link to the video, but it’s on YouTube. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724/113 "2014-01-07T18:41:58Z")
[Ramsay fails at manhood.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xhfJRdwHnU) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-awful-racist-attitudes-of-americans-against-offal-fair-or-unfair/677724.md?page=5)