You’re either a texture person, or you’re not. 
Okay, not quite true—some textures I like and some not (gristle, sea urchin, and oyster, among others). But Mark finds almost any texture interesting.
Love sea urchin, , oysters, clams , mussels are tripe & intestines like that?
Intestines generally have a texture closest to cooked clams. Especially with the cow there are so many intestine/stomach parts it’s hard to generalize the texture. Tripe and tubey intestines are totally different, as are other parts of the stomach too.
Generally speaking the closest thing would be cooked clams out of what you listed in terms of texture, other than the comby tripes which have like a crunch to it. It’s hard to describe because you say crunch and people think potato chips, but it’s a very different thing from that, there’s no adequate word in english for it.
As for some of my favorites, beef small (?) intestines, probably the easiest place to try this is at your local taqueria, known as tripas (not to be confused with tripe, it’s not that). The mexican places do a hard cook on these and the outsides get crispy, and you get the digestive fluids on the inside that has an earthy funk and a ricotta like texture. Kind of like the inside of a cooked oyster. Without the crisp, if you just cook it in a soup or something, it’s just a fun gummy chew.
The comby tripes have almost no flavor and are mainly a texture thing, as mentioned hard to describe other than crunchy chewy.
The other stomachs are more or less similar, and have various levels of gummy/chewy/crunch to it. The pork intestine mentioned for this dish is probably the stinkiest (the rest don’t stink IMO) and most challenging. So it goes well with flavors like sichuan which masks the stink.
Koreans also do what they call “large intestine”, which is one of the intestines flipped inside out so that all the fat lining the outside goes inside to look like a sausage. It’s basically all fat but delectable.
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The posts above about texture and in particular Joon’s phrase “fun gummy chew” reminds me of an interesting recent article in Food & Wine about the importance of texture in Taiwanese food. To quote:
“Bouncy. Springy. Slippery. Chewy. Gummy. These are coveted sensations in the cuisine of Taiwan, described by the letter Q … When I wrote the cookbook The Food of Taiwan in 2015, I felt that people just learning about Taiwanese food could better appreciate many dishes if they understood the role that Q played in them.”
https://www.foodandwine.com/q-texture-in-taiwanese-food-8607858
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Yes I lost interest when stomach fluids was mentioned.lol I will stick with clam strips and calamari and not anything with “ funk “ except for music.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.
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My buddy owns a few food carts in Taiwan , he grew up in Monmouth County, married a girl from Taiwan , she occasionally posts their meals on Instagram and Facebook. Lot of the item’s are available from Shanghai Bun in Matawan that he turned me onto many years ago. Still never going to eat intestinal parts
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We tried the Korean noodle soup, which was described as hot (i.e. spicy). It wasn’t, and Shanghai Bun has nothing to worry about in terms of competition with their noodle soups. For starters, Shanghai Bun makes way better noodles.
We filled up on soup and BBQ pork buns, so the Sichuan shrimp will be tomorrow.
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Glad to hear👍
The Beef with Shredded Hot Pepper, and the Sichuan Shrimp, more than made up for the lack of spiciness in the Korean soup. (Well, only on the sense that if you had all three together, you wouldn’t miss it in the soup ) FWIW, the small size of Sichuan Shrimp has five large shrimp in it.
After two meals for two, we still have half the food left.)
I should note that the BBQ pork buns I mentioned were from the Asian Food Mart, and very good. (Six large for $9.99 in the case at the front corner.)
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I really like all the different buns at the Asian Market and the custard cups too!
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I like that you can buy just two custard cups, and wish I didn’t have to buy BBQ pork buns by the half dozen.
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It’s ok with me because I just devour them
They keep well in the freezer!
@Ragtopssk I like that you have a proper appreciation for buns
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Respect my Asian brothers cuisine
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Got some new favorites at Cottage to report back!
Fish Filet and pickles cabbage hot pot - @CurlzNJ @MsBean this is the green fish soup we had in Edison last time! Nice tangy cabbage and soup, tender fish, glass noodles and very generous portion, could feed 2!
Spicy beef stew casserole - I had had the lunch version of this before but the dinner portion is much more substantial and comes with glass noodles, and the casserole dish keeps it nice and hot! Another great dish for sharing. If you asked me to pick between this and the classic water boiled beef I’m not sure which I would pick…
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Thanks for the tip. I still think about that soup often. SC is much more convenient than Edison.
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Will this travel well as take-out? (We would eat it right after getting it home, rather than store it overnight.)
We gave the spicy beef stew casserole a “neutral”; I can’t remember why, but it may be because I’m not keen on beef (especially the fat/grease) in stews and such.
Curious to know if others were dining IN. I haven’t been there in quite a while but the whole takeout-only appearance made it feel sad in there.
I think as long as you eat it right away it’ll be fine. There are glass noodles in it which gets soggy if you let it sit too long.
At lunchtime I see people dining in
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