Ozarks

Well, there's very little on this series I can comment about from actual experience, but truth be told, I have spent some time in the Missouri Ozarks, and can state some things from experience, well, sort of. I have not spent any time around the West Plains area, where most of this episode was filmed; still, I can say that what Bourdain presented was factual but incomplete. Yes, wild game such as squirrel and raccoon are considered perfectly good dinner entrees I mean, I went back there for a family funeral, and my cousin invited us to dinner, which consisted of fried chicken, and oh yes we have this squirrel which my daughter just shot yesterday, and we'll have that, too. We New Englanders think of eating squirrel the next thing to eating rat, but in fact it was quite tasty. Also there is a considerable amount of fishing--there are a ton of lakes in that region--but nearly all the fish available is fried catfish. That means, catfish (bottom feeding scavengers) rolled in cornmeal and fried to within an inch of its former life.

And another thing: Because Russian caviar (roe from the sturgeons from the Caspian and Black Seas) is no longer allowed to be imported to America, we now see something called "Arkansas caviar", which is the roe of paddlefish, a relative of the sturgeons, which the Ozarkers call "spoonbill". I asked my uncle about that, and he said, well, around here, we just call it bait.

Still, given Bourdain's East Coast prejudices, I was fully expecting the "Deliverence" banjo, inbreeding, and no teeth treatment. What he delivered was recognizable and, given the limited time, fair treatment of what I myself would consider, not my native culture, but certainly a collateral branch.


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"Oh, well" said Zanoni, "to pour pure water in the muddy well does but disturb the mud !"