Fried pig ears with lime at Bar Pilar.

Dish of the Week: Offal
Where: Bar Pilar

Shows from Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern have pushed a brand of adventurous eating that has caused many to look at food they previously found shocking in a new way. As someone growing up in a family that loved its offal, these things still seemed a little weird. But little by little, starting with the miniscule bites of meat on pigs’ feet, I found myself growing more interested in the “nasty bits.”

Bar Pilar’s offal happy hour, which we mentioned last week, is a good place to take some baby steps toward an appreciation of offal. At $4 a plate, it’s a safe price point to leave things you don’t enjoy on the plate. But at the same time, the dishes on offer are something easy to mentally process. The seared head cheese is a good place to start. In preparing head cheese, an animal head is boiled until the meat falls off the bone. Then a portion of the gelatin-rich stock is combined with the meat to form a “meat jello.” But luckily all this gets hidden in this lightly-breaded version that is seared to nearly eliminate the gelatin and leave only delicious bits of meat.

If you’re ready to take another step forward, the fried pigs’ ears with lime are another reasonably less squeamish choice. What comes out looks almost like shredded fried tortilla, but with a slightly more animal flavor. This version softens the crunch of cartilage that pig ear traditionalists may prefer, but lowers the barrier for acceptance. The dish’s saltiness and acidity from a squeeze of lime makes it a perfect bar snack. Next thing you know, you might to be digging in to fish eyes and organ meats with gusto.