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Eating Hot Dogs in Hanoi
What makes eating a food taboo? It’s a much-debated and extremely thorny question. Animals make it onto the coveted “do not eat list” due to (perceived or actual) intelligence, grossness, religious prohibition, companionship, or good old-fashioned tradition, but the list changes from country to country and continent to continent.
One of the most notable critters on America’s list: man’s best friend, Canis lupus familiaris. Here, dogs are boon companions. In Vietnam, the line applied to rabbits in Roger & Me is perfectly valid: “pets or meat.”
Outside has tackled the topic in detail, and its article on eating dogs in Vietnam is notable not just for its zesty topic, but for the fact that its author, Steven Rinella, is a hell of a good writer.Here’s Rinella recalling his father using the family dog as a handy model for how to butcher an animal:
Using a drink stirrer, he traced out the proper incision line up Bo-Bo’s underside, ass to esophagus. The dog lolled his head back and forth in the ecstasy of human attention while my dad mimicked the act of clearing out its entrails.
My family and I had always owned and loved dogs—lots of random strays and one particularly good duck hunter named Duchess—but I could never shake the implication of my dad’s lesson: Underneath all that playful fluffiness, dogs are made out of meat. From then on, I often wondered about the line separating the things that I was allowed to eat (cows, deer, chickens) from those that were taboo (dogs, cats, cockatiels). Who drew that line, anyway? And why was I bound to it?
In the process of snacking on dogs, Rinella reflects on the relationship between culture and cuisine, the ins and outs of Vietnamese superstition on the best times of the year to eat dog, and the mysterious internal heat that dog meat seems to produce after you’ve ingested it.
Gross? Perhaps. Fascinating? Absolutely.
Posted by | Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 9:40am | 5 comments
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"Underneath all that playful fluffiness, dogs are made out of meat". We're meat too. Given the wrong circumstances humans make decent eating as well to some. It’s "justifiable" in some tribes/cultures. I wonder if we give off the same heat feeling in the chest as dogs do? Yes, I know I should respect the dog eaters "culture", but I know I am not able to incorporate my love of dogs into my love of food. I just can't shake the grossness or immorality of the topic. In the end I'm very glad the writer felt a sense of shame after his eating adventure and stated it.
I've been a regular visitor to Vietnam & find that there is such a fantastic range of orthodox foods - particularly fish and seafood, as well as poultry, pork & beef - that there really isn't any reason to need to eat dog meat. I can understand it if there was a shortage of other foods - but there isn't!
I guess that the Viets love the taste - just as they love Trung Vit Lon - duck embryos - not for me though
I'd eat a dog. Like a rottweiler. I bet it would be good. I have a felling they're not service up purebreads over there though. Mongrel doesn't sounds terribly appetizing.
I've eaten guinea pig in Ecuador. People have those as pets. But seriously, it wasn't very good. I can't imagine dog is much better.
i don't understand what makes eating dog any different from eating cow. is it because we call it beef and pork and venison instead of what it is?
dog doesn't taste great, but then again neither does lamb.
it is not the eating
it is the treatment prior to...
in korea they beat the dog to a pulp and it's suffering is horrible
that is uncalled for
some fools will say its ok cause it's their culture
when a so called culture does this, it is one that has no purpose in this world we should not trade with them or help them let them rot