Small Shelly Fauna

This is my other brother Darryl

Outside of my religious viewing of Newhart on Nick at Nite and one of Tom Servo’s comments in Werewolf (“The grizzled militiaman runs a delightful B&B!”), I had no real knowledge of Bed and Breakfasts prior to this trip. But they’re great! Bed at night, breakfast in the morning, what more could you want? And it’s not one of those sucky motel continental breakfasts, either, with their stale croissants and tepid plastic packets of juice from concentrate. No, I’m talking serious home cooked meals, even if, in a common mistake made by Old Worlders, the bacon is actually fried ham. (I do heartily approve of the practice in England and the former [non-North American] colonies of serving tomatoes with breakfast, however.) I’m starting to develop a taste for chutney on my sausage. And nothing starts off the morning like a big glass of fresh granadilla juice. Granadilla, which I know better as passionfruit, is an extremely marginal element in American cuisine, the ultraviolet of the fruit rainbow, if you will. Here, it’s more common than orange juice. I have not yet stayed at an establishment that did not provide granadilla juice in the mornings, and one of the most popular sodas throughout the country is Schweppes’ Granadilla Twist™ (it is my favorite “exotic soda” so far encountered here, although Stoney™ Ginger Beer is a close second).

In other gastronomic musings, I have now been to several restaurants with “monkey gland burger” on the menu. I have yet to try this bizarrely-named sandwich, which sounds like it would be right at home amidst the banquet depicted in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I am somewhat afraid of it, and in each of those said restaurants I have ended up getting the specialty burger of the house (see previous posts for discussion of my love affair with the hamburger). But by now my curiosity can hold out no longer. I need me some monkey glands! Attempts to figure out what, exactly, “monkey gland” consists of (the obvious answer being ludicrous) have so far met with failure. The one menu that offered a description said only “hamburger with taste bud-tingling monkey gland sauce”, which didn’t really help, and only heightened the mystique.

Finally, another entry in my “unfortunate restaurant signage” log. Here in Bloemfontein there is a seafood restaurant called “Catch 22.” Where do I even begin with that one? First, a “catch-22” is, by definition, not a good thing. Even forgetting the literary and colloquial implications of that title and just taking the name at face value, how the heck can you expect to feed a restaurant’s worth of people having only caught 22 fish? It’s a terrible name whichever way you look at it.