Hold the Bones

Orecchiette with Rabbit Ragu – I Trulli
I Trulli

Vodka usually makes it a point to not eat animals that she has had as pets (Ginger, having only had a gerbil as a pet, does not share this problem).  Thankfully, this policy has only ruled out cats, dogs, and rabbits from her personal menu.

Until now.

To be fair, Vodka did not love her childhood bunnies – Kerrigan and Zayak (she was an obsessive figure skating fan in her youth) – nearly as much as she did her beloved cat and does her toy poodle.  So if she had to break her own no-eating-pets rule for any of them, the rabbits had to be the ones to go.

Never again.

We Hear Wine Helps Wash Down Rabbit Bones

Arriving at I Trulli for our 6:00pm reservation, Ginger is nowhere in sight.  Starving to death, Vodka, pretending to be an intellectual by reading The Great Gatsby on her iPhone, tries unsuccessfully to procure some bread. Instead, no Bread Boy to be found, she is left alone at their table to drink herself into a stupor before Ginger arrives.

I'll Take One of Everything

Befuddled, Ginger eventually makes her way through the front door, apologizing for the delay and mumbling something about being stuck on the phone with her father about her taxes.  As if by magic, the bread plate, with a jar of fresh ricotta cheese, finally appears, and we consume approximately half of a wheat field.  We each order the orecchiette with rabbit ragu at the suggestion of Michael Psilakis from the Best Thing I Ever Ate FILLED WITH ENVY episode.  Michael had made the dish look so appealing that we are willing to ignore the fact that we are eating a possible pet.

Our bowls of pasta arrive, brimming with bright red tomato sauce and small chunks of rabbit meat.  The pasta is al dente and shaped like miniature bowls, the perfect holders for the rabbit ragu.  There is just one problem.

The dish has bones in it.

BONES.

Not big bones.  Not eating off of a chicken bone or a rib bone or any kind of bone that we understand.

There Be Bones in These Noodles

Instead, the sauce is sprinkled with miniscule bone shards that we do not even notice until we are biting into it.  By the end of the dish, there is a neat pile of bone pieces on the edge of both of our plates.

Needless to say, we inform the waiter, of what we, apparently mistakenly, believe is a misstep.

And we are told, “Oh yes, that happens with gamey meat.”

Clearly, we don't have game.

Ginger Biting Gingerly

The orecchiette itself was scrumptious and the sauce enjoyable.  But next time, I Trulli, hold the bones.

I Trulli’s Orecchiette with Rabbit Ragu: 3 stars