Escar-go-goat

Today I had goat for the first time. At least, I can't remember having it before, though I love the cheese that comes from the little head-butters. I was at the food court of the Corner Mall, and I wanted to avoid the chicken -- any chicken. So I went to the Jamaican place and saw a vat labeled "curried beef." When I asked for the same curried beef, the woman behind the counter got a worried expression and said, "That's not beef. It is... ahhh... goat." Now I got suspicious. Was she trying to keep me away from something so good it could only be ordered through a password? I wasn't afraid of goat. In fact, it occurred to me that goat was never mentioned in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, the book that explains just how disgusting beef is. (I don't know which was Schlosser's bigger achievement, writing 400 pages on the nutritional, hygenic, and political failings of ground beef, or making me just as scared of chicken with a single sentence. He didn't mean to imply that poultry was any better, Schlosser wrote, he just didn't have time to write another 400 pages on the particular evils of McNuggets.) Anyway, the goat wasn't bad -- a more tender and slightly stringier version of lamb. The curry didn't do much for me, but maybe next time I can get the yellow curry at the Thai place and replace their flavorless chicken with the goat. And I can replace the overcooked broccoli from the Thai place with the nice-and-crunchy stalks from the Cajun place (where everything else is terrible). And the onion chutney from the Indian place might taste pretty good if it's paired with something that's not from the Indian place. For about $30 a day, I could put together a tasty little lunch at the food court. Then again, a couple of whiskey sours would make the afternoon go by faster at half the price.