When I think of turtles, which is usually only when I see one flattened on the blacktop of a back road, I don’t usually think of them as food (although I do think of them as dinner plates). Wednesday night, though, fried turtle was one of the specials at Schultzie’s Supper Club in Dickeyville, Wisconsin, so, I thought: What the heck; if Andrew Zimmern can do it, so can I.

The turtle was chopped into pieces about the size of a chicken thigh, coated in beer batter, and deep-fried. It was served with warm butter and a slice of lemon, although the lemon didn’t really do much for it. The cook told me to expect several different flavors, and he was right. Some bites had a texture like a leg of lamb but with a purely savory flavor. Some bites had a little fishiness, and others tasted a bit like kidney. It definitely didn’t taste like chicken, but I liked it.

Here’s the best part: the turtle comes right from the Mississippi River. Schultzie’s buys their turtle meat from Schafer Fishery, one of the few remaining commercial fisheries along the Mississippi.

Just for good measure, I sampled one other food that was new to me: pickled gizzard. When I saw it at the salad bar, I thought it might be pickled herring. Wrong. I’ve cooked gizzard before, usually frying it in butter, and have never been a big fan. I don’t mind the flavor, but the texture was always too chewy for my taste. The pickled gizzard, though, was surprisingly tender and very tasty. I could have eaten a whole plate of it. Maybe next time.

Schultzie’s was not too busy that night, so I sat at the bar, where I had to listen to the inane ramblings of the cranky old bastard at the end of the bar. He was expounding on some vague conspiracy theory about our inability to capture Osama Bin Laden. “Something’s fishy about that.” I guess it’s easier to believe in a conspiracy than to accept incompetence. After asserting that the Pakistanis must be hiding him, he let everyone within earshot know he favored the nuclear option: “I don’t care how many Pakistanis we kill. Hell, in World War II, we bombed the hell out of Dresden. That killed a lot of civilians.” I left Schultzie’s glad that he was not in charge of our military strategy.

It’s 40 degrees and sunny today and Wisconsites are breaking out the shorts. I love the North!

© Dean Klinkenberg, 2009