It Takes Guts Sometimes

Tea: Iced, in a Styrofoam cup.

Music: Mexican country, complete with tricolored accordions.

Tiempo: Noche.

Low turnout at tonight's photo opening (although it'll be up another three months, so I'm not tearing out my nonexistent hair). Still, any excuse for comfort food is a valid excuse.

And in my world, variety meats are the quintessential comfort foods. At nine o'clock on a Saturday night, that meant Mexican.

Two Amigos, on 75th Street west of Interstate 36 in Shawnee, Kansas, doesn't have a Web page. Trust me, if it did I'd be pointing you there right now.

It's somewhat ironic that the restaurant is in an old Taco Bell. This happies me, I must say. It's nice to see an independent making it where a chain outpost couldn't.

So, on to tonight's selections -- and be warned, I overdid it a little.

I ordered a burrito de lengua. That's tongue, kids, and I've been eating it since I was a kid. My mom believed in giving me opportunities (orders, if need be) to try new foods, and I acquired a taste for organ meats early on. (All but liver, that is. I like it now, though.)

Then I turned to the taco menu, ordering one de cabeza (head meat), one de buche (pigs' maw) ... and one de tripas. No, that's not tripe. (Not that I don't love menudo, but I'd had a big bowl of it on Thursday.)

Tripas are the Mexican equivalent of chitlins. Yep, intestines. And yes, they'd better be cleaned out really well. I got a bad batch once, and it put me off them for more than a year.

These were perfect, though. Dense, satisfying, the flavor still a bit pungent but without that hint of -- well, caca -- that you get when they're not as clean as they should be. The other meats were also excellent, in their own ways -- from the rich cabeza to the chewy buche to the almost silky lengua.

And I feel much better. Sometimes, you see, the only cure for a bad night is something offal.

Ba dum pum.