I love Chris McDonald and I love tripe.

Or maybe it’s better to say that I love Chris McDonald, the great chef behind Cava, and that I appreciate tripe. Or more accurately, I love Chris McDonald, for his immense talent at the stove and for his ambition, for the way he actually says what he thinks and does what he believes in, and for the way he always seems to be right smack at the leading edge of whatever’s new and interesting and good about food—and I hate tripe.

I hate it in a passionate, heartfelt, lip-curled, just-threw-up-a-little-bit-in-my-mouth kind of way. Tripe is the lining of a ruminant’s stomach: the smooth stuff is from the rumen (usually a cow’s), the honeycombed variety is from the animal’s second stomach, called the reticulum (how apt it would be to misspell that); you can also take tripe from cows’ third and fourth stomachs, though I gather that even stomach lining fans don’t fancy it as much. I don’t mind where the tissue comes from—I’m all for snout-to-tail eating. But tripe tastes like stomach, and chewing it is most often akin to chewing a rubber glove. A rubber glove that’s spent a lifetime marinating in gastric juices.

But Chris McDonald loves the stuff, and ever the optimist—or masochist—he seems intent on feeding it to the masses. Or, at very least, he seems intent on taunting the masses with it.

The story begins with Toronto city councillor John Filion. Filion, to his great credit, has managed to persuade the city’s health department, as well as Toronto’s naysaying press corps, of just how hideously bad our street food is. It’s not only hideously bad, but it’s an international embarrassment that in a metropolis that almost never stops saying it’s world-class, just about the only foodstuff our paranoiac provincial government allows us to buy on the street is a hot dog. In July, Filion hopes to persuade Ontario’s health minister of this, with a street food fair he’s organizing at Nathan Phillips Square to show off what we’re missing. Guy Rubino (the chef at Rain) will be cooking, as will an A-list of city chefs who’ve been asked to cook for the cause, including, as it happens, Chris McDonald. The public will be invited to sample what the chefs offer; it will almost certainly be cheap, as street food ought to be, and should be an excellent opportunity to taste some of the stuff that most often rings in at around $125 a head.

Just last week, Ryan Jennings, one of Toronto Life’s contributors, was reporting on a piece about the street food fair for an upcoming issue. He called McDonald. One would imagine that a chef who has been asked to participate might pull out all the stops to make something nobody could possibly resist. You’d imagine that that chef, bestowed with such an honour, would endeavour to make something so irresistibly good that after trying just one bite, any clear-thinking voter or councillor or provincial health minister would have no choice but to declare, mid-chew: “Good Lord, we need this kind of food on our streets every day of the year!”

And what is Chris McDonald’s irresistibly tasty populist street food contribution? He’s promising florentine tripe on a bun.