tricandille

Often written tricandilles, although properly it should be la Tricandille. It’s pork tripe, specifically the large intestines (chaudins) seasoned with salt, garlic, épices Rabelais and parsley, and cooked on the grill (traditionally over sarments, or vine cuttings) or fried until crispy.

Like another local dish, lamproie, it’s powerful stuff; like lamprey, it has its own confraternity, the Confrerie de la Tricandille, who don grey robes and caps topped with trailing curls of fake tripe.

The story goes the name comes from the Roman caterer Caius Tricandillusm, who supplied the cook of Julius Caesar (presumably the same who invented coq au vin) with tripe and was appointed Senator for Gastronomic Affairs in 46 BC.