Muskrat delayed: A Delmarva culinary lesson learned
While I do like to eat muskrat, I might like telling people that I eat muskrat nearly as much and sharing my muskrat adventures most of…
While I do like to eat muskrat, I might like telling people that I eat muskrat nearly as much and sharing my muskrat adventures most of all.
Friday night I declared a (fairly spontaneous) Varmint Fest, which is to say I wanted to arrange to go out to a muskrat dinner. There are only small pockets of places that serve this delicacy and the Delmarva Peninsula is one of them.
The simple reason is that they are plentiful and fat when no other food or animals are. There even was an old-timey rumor that the Catholics got the water animal declared a fish so it could be eaten on Fridays during Lent. It’s something that still goes on all over the world.
Maybe that’s what I had in mind as Friday approached. More likely, though, it just was that muskrat season is ending and there have been years when I missed out on it altogether.
I didn’t want 2017 to be one of them. This year, I went to Dayton’s an iconic local restaurant from which I’ve never had ‘rat. The sign on the front was clear, it said “Muskrats Are Back.”
But you had to go into the restaurant (which is where they keep the fine print) to know that it only was back on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
My public restroom obsession
The restaurant changed, but the art stayed the samebytonyrusso.medium.com
At some level, I should have known this. I mean, apparently everyone else does. It is a subtle reminder that there is a separate culture on Delmarva that ‘come-heres’ like me can’t co-opt without effort.
I really only try and embrace the culture when it is convenient, but I’m clearly not an initiate. That said, by going and failing to get muskrat, I added to the depth of my Eastern Shore Cultural knowledge.
Everyone who has their muskrat at Dayton’s knows it is served Tuesdays and Thursdays as sure as everyone who goes to Dave’s Pittsville Dinette knows Muskrat night is Wednesday. In retrospect, it should have occurred to me to ask which days were muskrat days at Dayton’s. It was a rookie mistake that I’ll not repeat.
There are very few people who start eating muskrat as grownups, and even fewer who are building an annual tour of muskrat places on the Eastern Shore. I’m one of them, so I have lessons to learn beyond just the subtleties of preparation.
UPDATE:
Dave White died in 2017, Dayton’s might be the only place worth going.
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Tony Russo is a journalist and author of “Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult.” Subscribe to his Bagel Manifesto here.