I’ve called out food trucks before for obfuscating the name and content of common dishes, but when Mei Mei Street Kitchen put Sanguinaccio Dolce on the board, they helpfully, if bluntly, glossed it with “Taza chocolate, John Crow farm pigs blood.” $2, what could possibly go wrong? If there’s going to be blood in my dessert, I’d rather it be local.
Sanguinaccio Dolce (don’t you just love saying that?) is a traditional carnival dish of the Basilicata region of Italy, the arch of the foot of the boot, if you will, or maybe a spat, since it has coastline on both the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas. It’s more or less chocolate pudding with some fresh pig’s blood in it, sometimes served with biscuits.
Mei Mei provided no biscuits, but did include a nice dollop of cream and some sesame(?) seeds. The characteristic flavor and texture of Taza chocolate was evident in the apparently creamy pudding. There was no obvious or intrusive blood or pork flavor, not even the saltiness that I was expecting. It’s just a subtle twist to the chocolate, a bitterness that I doubt you’d even be able to identify as blood if some evil person gave it to you without disclosure.
Ingredients aside, $2 for such a small serving of pudding may seem a little steep, but you do get to say that you ate it. Plus, how much chocolate pudding (and blood) belongs in a balanced diet? If you need to load up, go get yourself a venti chocolate cookie frappuccino with two strips of bacon. [N.B., at the time I wrote this I was as yet unaware of the Dunkin Donuts bacon egg and cheese on a donut breakfast “sandwich”.]
I applaud the Mei Mei team for putting something different out there and also for making an effort to use the whole animal. Their menu is ever-changing and seasonal, so get your sanguinaccio dolce while you can. Maybe as summer heats up they’ll add ice cream and call it Sundae Bloody Sundae.
Also, if you haven’t heard, Mei Mei is opening a brick and mortar restaurant, and you can support them on kickstarter.