Scary Food: Dine in, take out ... if you dare!

Here I am, though, in the awful position of trying offal at Teutonia Mannerchor in Pittsburgh's North Side.

An auxillary member, I've eaten the German club's food many times at special events and lunches, and count its homemade spaetzel and schnitzel among the city's best ethnic dishes. But on this particular afternoon, I'm staring down a dish offered on the bar's board menu that's grossed me out for years: a blood tongue sandwich.

"You gotta love a food that tastes you back," my editor had kidded me when I told him, in a shaky voice, I was going to swallow my fear and try it.

Thankfully, the freckled lunch meat that arrived on my table, nestled between two pieces of rye, wasn't wearing taste buds. Slicing it ultra-thin, though, couldn't disguise the fact the cured pork tongue from Usinger's in Milwaukee was dotted with small white chunks of . . . something. (Diced smoked ham fat with the beef blood, I later discovered.) Like many darker lunch meats, it also smelled slightly earthy.

"You kind of have to grow up with it," conceded my waitress, Alice Weinbrenner, when she set the sandwich ($4.75, including potato chips) in front of me. It's popular with the mostly older men's and women's choirs who practice at the club Wednesday evenings.

And if you didn't? I suggest washing it down with a squirt of yellow mustard or a pint of Spaten. Or in my case, both.