The Llong Goodbye

The October Saveur contains a compelling short essay titled “Truculent but Tender.” It’s about eating a llama.

The premise is simple. Once upon a time, there was a one-year-old llama owned by the mother of one of the writer’s friends. Although he was fuzzy and cute like other llamas, he was also no doubt a total bastard who regularly tipped 8 percent and never refilled the Brita pitcher. The owner therefore took him behind the barn … and made him into delicious llama steaks, llama-stuffed cabbage, and llama lomo saltado! Everybody’s a winner–except, of course, the llama.

At the end of the piece, writer Paul Adams finds himself newly “attuned to the unsuspected culinary potential of novel animals.” This begs the question: What’s next for Adams? Gibbons? Elephants? Seeing-eye dogs?

Stay tuned for a future spine-tingling edition of Saveur wherein Adams’s “friend’s mother” takes care of a handyman and sends Adams back to Brooklyn with a Samsonite wheelie full of man meat.