I live for liver.
I have to, 'cause I don't have one. (Well, that's not true. I have one. But it lives in Miami and only writes when it needs money. More or less.)
But I exaggerate. The thing, if you must know, is that I fucked up my big pink organ, not so many years ago, through prolonged participation in the whole IV-narcotic craze that's plaguing so many of our young people today. In need, say, of a stray squirt to soften that Mexican roofing tar clogging my perpetually dull-as-a-piano-leg syringe, yours truly was not above uploading H20 from whatever bus-station toilet he happened to be holed up in. Which does something to a fellow. Shoot that in your neck and there's no telling if you're getting off from heroin or from the industrial-strength cat chowder the last lunkhead left as a souvenir. But don't get me going.
The liver, as those of you who showed up for hygiene class may recall, is "the janitor of the body," the organ responsible for filtering the muck. Thus, according to the battery of experts employed to keep my weary little janitor in semi-working order, it was all those filthy drugs that turned me into FTAM - Future Transplant of America Material. ("You don't get hepatitis C from swallowing your gum," as one crusty Cedars-Sinai substance-abuse ace was wont to say.)
But enough about me. As a rule, nobody under 38 eats liver voluntarily. For children, it's punishment food, one of those creepy, foul-smelling dishes Uncle Doody and Gramps whip up and chomp in their boxers in front of World Wrestling Federation marathons. (My own mother, God bless her, gave me the choice of "eating my liver" or scrubbing the bathroom with my slipper-socks. Needless to say, I grew to love the smell of Lysol.) Indeed. The idea of willingly consuming the little janitor's squeegee is more than most nondebauched under-38s can handle. But then, something happens. You wake up one day and - poof! - the party's over. You want something but you don't know what. Could it be . . .? Good God! Suddenly a little voice in your head begins to whisper, "Get up! Leave the house! GO GRAB SOME LIVER!"
Yes and yes again! It's a milestone, really, one of those "passages" Gail Sheehy somehow forgot: the moment a grownup morphs from the non-liver to the need-liver lifestyle. On the Jerry Stahl HPR (Heinous Personal Realization) scale, a citizen's first voluntary liver meal falls somewhere between buying that first minivan and squeezing into your first Depends. Stepping up to liver is the kind of move that says, "Doggone it, I'm through being hip! It's all about surviving now . . . doing what I have to do to drag this two-legged bus wreck of a body through another day on the Planet Middle-Aged."
Which brings us, at long last, to Musso & Frank Grill, "Hollywood's Oldest Restaurant" and home to the freshest liver you can get without actually biting into a cow.
Why mention Musso's after this litany of viral insult and chronological torment? Well, I'll tell you. According to my homeopathic practitioner, Swami Chuck, when you have a bad liver, one way to pump it back up is to eat some good liver. Who knew? Whether or not this nutri-symmetric approach applies across the board - in which case desperate baldies willing to scarf chinchilla pelts can snag full heads of lustrous, Moe Howard-level hair - is anybody's guess. All I know is, when I take my liver out on the town, Musso's is the place I take it, and there are plenty of reasons why.
Out of the gate, of course, there's the nostalgia factor. How many great livers, from Spencer Tracy's to William Faulkner's, have been pickled to throbbing, cirrhosis-ridden slabs in this very edifice? It's hard not to go a tad misty-eyed at the thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald's liver trying to crawl out of his pinstripes at the thought of absorbing one more world-famous, bone-dry martini. But forget the Alcoholic Hall of Fame. How 'bout the eats?
Not to be sniffed at is the fact that, unlike so many of our nation's big-bill red-meat emporiums, Musso's does not offer just one choice of bovine janitorial organ. Au contraire! You have to be careful. A close reading of M&F's famed War and Peace-size menu will reveal a mismatched duo of liver offerings. Up front, needless to say, there's the Standard American Liver dish plunked square in the middle of the usual entree roster. And, as old liver hands will tell you, you're perfectly free to order it - if what you want is a flat, thin, unsatisfying, curled-at-the-edges liver event, a sort of liver pancake packing all the gastronomic intrigue of a Jimmy Dean Link over which a Chevy Blazer has backed up, parked long enough to pop into the 7-Eleven for Pepto-Bismol, and pulled off.
Which is no knock on Musso's. Most restaurants, if they even sport liver, pretty much restrict themselves to the same sort of chew-till-you-drop sole-of-Hush Puppy textbook liver presentation. What makes Musso & Frank so special - no, so beloved - to liver aficionados from as far away as Minsk and as near as Cherokee and Selma, is its second liver offering, its alterna-liver, what devotees (be still my heart!) like to refer to as "Jumbo," "Mister Big" or "Da Chunk."
