There are these Chinese places (forget the name of them) where they make vegetarian fake meat out of some kind of gluten. It all sort of tastes the same, and the food is okay but the concept is freaky. I always wondered why, if the idea of eating your friends made you sick, why’d you want to eat something that looked and felt just like your friend but wasn’t? Like carefully forming mushrooms into insects and snakes to eat, or sculpting an aspic to almost exactly resemble a dead baby so you could remember all the good times when you used to eat human infants. Why not just eat plants? Anyway. This musing gave me an idea of the anti-vegan restaurant in which this is reversed and everything is made of meat. The entrées wouldn’t be a problem, just eat American style and you’re done. The other stuff would require some ingenuity and hard work.

Lettuce could be constructed by marinating and pounding out filets very flat and then flash-frying them. Rocky Mountain Oysters might be Brussels Sprouts. Chicken is malleable enough that good slicing and dyeing would simulate a wide range of veggies like peppers, squash, etc. Coarsely ground turkey, fried, is corn.

Beverages are tougher, because you can only drink so much blood really. I think we’d have to work with alcoholic cocktails mostly and substitute shrimp for onions and olives. One could always just pour a big glass of icewater and use super-cold frozen beef cubes for ice, too!

For dessert, candied suet! Meatloaf cheesecake! Filipino “chocolate pudding”! Or just a nice hot cup of beef tea cappuccino.

The variations are only limited by our imagination, and this is America! We’re a can-do people.

I’ve been talking back and forth about this project lately with this gal Michelle I sort of half know. The other day I told her I was making a tomato out of lamb stew meat, and she asked about pickles. My response: “Some people just use sausages and green paint to make pickles but where’s the challenge? I like to marinate some finely sliced pastrami in a vinegar mint dressing for a week to get that greenish tinge and then wrap it very tightly and concentrically until a long, wide, firm, bumpy true cucumber of meat is produced. Bon appetit!”

I bet she asks me out now. Women love artists.