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Published on 10/02/1995 All articles from this issue

Menu selections from Magdalena Avenue

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By Clyde Noel

How about a chunk of skunk, a smidgen of pigeon or a swirl of squirrel? Or rigor mortis tortoise, road toad a la mode or shake 'n bake snake?

Last month, driving down Magdalena Avenue on my way to the Town Crier, I saw the largest raccoon I have ever seen. It was lying in the middle of the road, a victim of a car going too fast and the result - another road kill.

I stopped the car to get a better look and started talking with several joggers who were also looking at the size of the dead raccoon.

George, one of the runners who lives in the vicinity of the Rancho Shopping Center, jogs around the golf course at the Los Altos Golf and Country Club every morning. He said he can't believe all the road kill around the golf course. Almost every day he sees a dead animal on Hillview or Fairway avenues. The creatures are hit when they venture too far from the golf course.

"Don't use my last name, but I've been thinking about opening a "road kill" restaurant," George said.

"What would you call it?" I asked.

"You kill it - We Grill it," it would read, and if I could find a good place for the restaurant, I could make a good living. Eating food is more fun, when it's hit on the run," George said.

While we continued talking he told me about the menu he would adopt. He said his menu would offer something for everyone, including those too squeamish to come in for the road-kill fare.

"I could start off with center-line raccoon which tastes really good when it's straight from the road, for $4.95. Or, for $3.95, the chicken that didn't get across the road."

I could feature flat ca as an appetizing single for $2.95 or in a stack for $3.95.

He told me his late night delights could include a rack of raccoon, a smear of deer, awesome 'possum or cheap sheep, served each night after dark.

A tall gangly man in K-Mart running shoes, George has a tattoo on his upper arm that says, "If you think your life stinks, try a whiff of mine."

George always has a sly grin and a marvelous warped sense of humor. He wears a baseball cap backwards when he runs because the front of the cap says "Goodbye."

.George is a retired oil field worker who came to Silicon Valley to work in the computer industry when the oil fields went bust in the 1980s. He still goes back each year for the Terlingua chili cook-off.

The idea of his road kill restaurant came from the different concoctions used at the cook-off. When he mentioned his idea at the cook-off, not everybody was impressed with his menu.

At that time he suggested a bag 'n gag daily special: "Anything dead on bread."

For dog lovers, he would feature a canine cuisine. Some of the menu would be identified as a slab of Lab, pit bull pot-pie, Crocker cutlets, poodles 'n noodles, and a round of hound.

Guess-that-mess is the daily special: If you can guess what it is, you eat it for free.

Evidently George has had this road kill idea on his mind for awhile. He mentioned the time he was talking about his menu to a lady of better-than-average breeding when she asked what was in his guess-that-mess.

George said he really didn't know. But, two cars in front of us run over it, he drawled. "We just scooped it up off the road and tossed it in the pot." The woman fainted.

Driving down Magdalena Avenue this past Tuesday, I saw George, the jogger, again. He was looking at a dead squirrel. I stopped and asked how his cooking with culinary imagination was coming. He didn't say.

I'll be watching for store vacancies in Rancho Shopping Center, because I don't think his cooking and dispensing of special wares appeal to me. I'm too squeamish.

Clyde Noel is a Town Crier Staff Writer.