Snake Feast!

My last night in New York before leaving for Thailand, I wandered into a small discount book shop and discovered a box full of mini Rough Guides.  I picked up a few that were relevant for the regions I planned to visit and tossed them in my bag, figuring they might come in handy for inspiration.  I promptly forgot about them, until my immanent arrival in Hanoi triggered a recollection of item #20 from "25 Ultimate World Food Experiences": Snake Feast.

Now, a snake feast certainly seemed like one of those experiences better done in a group, so I raised the idea to the Nathan, Alastair, Martin and Alex, the British guys I've been traveling with since the slow boat to Luang Prabang.  Nathan was immediately into the idea, Martin and Alex weren't enthusiastic but thought it would be interesting, and Alastair was hesitant but eventually agreed to join us.  Book in hand, I went to the front desk of our hostel and told Moon, our gracious and helpful host, that we wanted to have a snake feast, preferably at the restaurant suggested in our guide.  Fifteen minutes of semi-intelligible English later, we were riding in a cab under the impression that we would be taken to some snake restaurant of Moon's suggestion, being that the one in the book was too far away.

As the taxi meter ticked closer to the fixed price Moon had negotiated with driver, we found ourselves on a dark but busy street, clearly away from the main commercial center.   A young man on a motor bike tapped on one of the windows and began a conversation with our driver.  Soon, our driver turned and followed him down a very dark, very sketchy alley.  A couple turns later, we pulled up next to him and he handed the driver a laminated business card with the image of a snake.  The driver communicated that he wanted to take us to some alternative location, but we waved him off and told him that we wanted to go to the place we had originally agreed upon.  He nodded and we continued on down the darkened alley for another minute, before coming to a stop in front of a building with a sign for Cuoq Trieu, the restaurant from our book!

At the entrance of the restaurant, we were greeted by jars of liquid, filled with coiled, preserved snakes.

Venturing inside, we came to zoo-like cages, the first of which contained a gigantic python (easily 20 feet or longer) and some short, strange looking birds with long, thin legs and puffy feathers, which one of our hosts informed us would not be harmed by the python.  A bit further down, we came to some porcupines, ducks, and, finally, cobras.  A well-dressed gentleman with speckled hair greeted us and used a hook to rouse the cobras in the cage.  He showed us his right hand, fingers gnarled and apparently useless from a cobra bite some 30 years earlier.  After we delivered the requisite gasps, we were directed upstairs and asked how we found the restaurant--not an unreasonable question, given its well-off-the-beaten-path location.  I produced the guidebook and handed it over, watching as it quickly made the rounds through the staff, who pointed excitedly to see their restaurant mentioned specifically as one of 25 ultimate food experiences.  I'm not sure if they understood the precise title of the book or got just how impressive their inclusion is, or if they just enjoyed seeing the name of their restaurant mentioned in glossy little book.

We were led to a table in a massive, beautiful outdoor courtyard, filled with plants and caged birds and given the option of paying 200,000 dong (roughly $11) each for a meal made from the snake of our choosing, or 1,300,000 for all five of us if we wanted a cobra.  $3 extra each to eat the king of snakes?  Easy choice.  The hard part was deciding who would eat the heart, but with only Nathan and I feeling adventurous enough to want to give it a try, a quick flip of a two-quid coin determined that I would get to do the honors.

A few minutes later, this was dropped 5 feet from our table:

The snake handler picked up the cobra and with the help of an assistant, slit its throat and squeezed its blood into five shot glasses and its bile into five more.

Suddenly feeling a bit squeamish, we quickly ordered a round of beer chasers.  As we waited for our beer, the shot glasses were brought to the table, along with the cobra's heart on a small dish.  As you can see in this video, the heart was still beating:

By the time our beers arrived, I'll admit, there was a bit of adrenaline rushing through my veins.  I poured myself a glass of beer to be ready as a chaser, and then... well, why don't you watch the video:

Yeah, that felt pretty bad-ass.  Honestly, you can mostly just taste the rice whiskey that the blood and bile are mixed with, but it's quite the head trip.

The meal itself was actually quite tasty, featuring no less than seven dishes made from our cobra, including a cobra soup (sort of like a Japanese mushroom soup), grilled cobra pieces (not unlike teriyaki pork), fried cobra skin (similar to pork rinds), cobra wrapped in dried seaweed (a bit like unagi yaki), cobra stir fry (quite tasty, like port stir fry), and cobra spring rolls (just delicious):

In sum, the snake feast was an unforgettable culinary experience, made even better by the wonderful company:

Tomorrow, we're off on a 2-day/1-night trip to Halong Bay, where we'll be crossing our fingers for good weather and a clear view of the Leonid meteor shower, supposedly the brightest in Asia in 25 years.  Life is good!