When I first approached Deep End Diner Eddie Lin about recording a snake segment for the Year of the Snake I thought we might find a chef who would fry up some snake meat. I’d record Eddie eating the snake and oohing and ahhing over how truly delicious it was, and it would be a short quirky 3 minute segment for Good Food. It would be a PG version of extreme eating.
Instead we got the X rated version. I should have known it was suspicious when Chef Lupe Liang of Hop Woo restaurant in Chinatown wanted to record the segment right at dinner time – 7pm on a Thursday night. Sure he prepared some fried snake nuggets, but he also prepared 6 other courses including a snake skin salad, snake gut stew, a rice hot pot with coagulated snake blood and finally a shot of warm snake bile mixed with Chinese rice liquor. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.
I tasted while Eddie feasted. I was squeamish when we recorded and squeamish again as I edited the piece. The following photos document our crazy snake feast. Hear it all go down tomorrow on Good Food…
Course 1 – a cold snake skin and jellyfish salad
Course 1 – Cold Snake Skin Salad
Chef Lupe taunts Good Food Producer Gillian with snake skin
Eddie compares the top and bottom of the snake skin
Course 2 is garnished with beautiful flower petals
Course 2 – Snake, Chicken and Pork Hot Pot
Chef Lupe carved a bird out of a carrot as a garnish
Course 3 – Fried Snake and Frog Legs
Just a simple hot pot…with some snake
Course 6 – Coagulated snake blood and rice
Lupe mixes up the snake blood and rice
Snake gut hot pot
Eddie investigates the snake guts
Lupe pours rice liquor into the snake bile for course 7
Eddie is officially grossed out