Photos: Seven Courses of Boa Constrictor

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…