Description
Visiting 99 Ranch Market makes you realize not just how little you know about world cuisine, but how little you wanted to know. For example, I caught a glimpse of a product labeled "beef marrow guts" and now am haunted by its applications. The Internet provides little recipe assistance or even anatomical assistance: It's tripe, maybe, or green-goo-filled lower intestines, or the squeezed-out insides of bones. Still, as with Frito pie and foie gras, some of the nastiest-sounding food on earth winds up being delicious. Connoisseurs of organ meat will find themselves knee-deep in potential dinners at 99 Ranch, which stocks every part of the pig and then some: ear, tongue, snout, brain, face, end gut, bung gut, uteri, stomach, liver, kidney, feet, tail, blood, and "melt," which looks like a prolapsed rectum. (Sorry, but you weren't going to eat it anyway.) If you can't wait until home to get a dose of vitamin O, on the other side of the market is a little Hong Kong-style cafe, where these delicacies are served up on steaming plates.
