or those of you unfamiliar with Texas businesses, Central Market is a grand, trendy iconoclast of a grocery store. It sells African cola but no Pepsi. Five thousand cheeses, none of them Kraft. It is a labyrinth of luxurious foods with a premium on variety and a distain for convenience shopping. Ginseng? Yes. Charmin? No. When it opened in Austin, Central Market was a smash - a couple was once married in the cheese aisle -- and has since expanded to San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, where my boyfriend and I regularly drop hundreds on rare Asian vegetables and mystery wines and ruby-red beef. It's not that it's so expensive (it is, a little), it's just that we want so much.*

A while ago, a trio of meats in the Central Market frozen section snagged my interest: ostrich, buffalo, and elk. Ever since, I've entertained the fantasy of a taste test - one of those spiffy, educational evenings that involves cooking and planning and organization and, well, all the things I cannot do. Every once in a while, high on adrenaline or Dos Equis, I promised friends we'd do it: the exotic meat thingy-dingy. But it never happened. Eventually, I shelved the idea along with the other things I only talk about - learning guitar, writing a book, paying my credit card bill - and so I am pleased to report that last Sunday, a very special taste test occurred.

The participants: my friends Jodi and Owen Egerton, their MFA writer friends Stephanie and Chris, and me. I'll admit, I was worried. I'd talked it up, I'd sung the virtues, but by the time Jodi and I cooked the meats (in meatball-sized portions for tasting purposes), they looked the same. What if they tasted the same? What if they all just tasted like, you know, meatballs?

"The ostrich isn't bad," Jodi said. We stood around with the dainty meats in our hand, nodding our heads.

"But the buffalo is better," said Stephanie.

"And the elk tastes like fish," I said, spitting it out into my napkin.

And there you have it, folks. A consensus. So we opened another bottle of wine.

*A poetic and incredibly informative piece about Central Market by Hank Stuever can be found here